Ignorance In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

If books were illegal would we read more? Ray Bradbury imagines a bleak world in Fahrenheit 451 where books are illegal and firefighters start fires instead of stop them. Knowledge is abandoned for entertainment. Tribulations traded for ignorance. Montag, a firefighter, starts to witness this bleak world. The thin veil of entertainment is lifted as he becomes more open minded. His captain sees this as betrayal. Beatty, the fire captain, confronts Montag with an ultimatum. Montag chooses books and freedom over ignorance. He ends up burning his old life and going on the run. Fellow fugitives welcome him and soon after they witness the destruction of the old society. Having watched humanity end itself once again in a glorious blaze, the fugitives

The culture is ignorant and close minded. A lot of people don’t read in today’s society, however few could imagine a world without books. In Fahrenheit 451 books are completely absent. It wasn’t the government that took the books. It was the people who left them behind. Novels are traded for entertainment in the living room. Life is fast paced with no time to think, because no one wants to. Ignorance is a big part of the culture. Montag tells Faber, “Nobody listens any more... I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me... I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls” (Bradbury 78). Montag is frustrated with his wife’s ignorance. She pays no attention to what’s going around her. Mildred doesn’t show any desire to think deeper. When Montag starts reading with her she shuts him out and doesn’t try to comprehend the words. Mildred is just like every citizen in this dystopia. They don’t notice anything larger than themselves or dig deeper. Their ignorance also relates to their close minded nature. The culture has very rigid opinions and no one is easily moved. No one has the desire to look deeper into anything. Mildred says to Montag, “You want to give up everything? After all these years of working because one night some woman and her books....” (Bradbury 48). This shows how close minded Mildred is. She doesn’t care about the woman or the books. She just cares about herself. As long as her life

All of the characters struggle with their identity at some point in this book. Identity is choosing for yourself who you are. Your identity is not defined by anyone else. “He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (Bradbury 21). This is Montag realizing his identity crisis. His being is split. Half of him siding with Clarisse and happiness. The other half settling with ignorance. He is struggling with who he really is. Montag learns throughout the book the identity is created through actions. Montag’s identity new identity was not created by the books he read but by the lessons he experienced. Montag symbolically sheds his old identity for good at the river. Like his clothes his old self is stripped away and replaced. Another big theme in Fahrenheit 451 is cycles. Throughout the book Montag struggles with the idea of life and death. In the beginning his wife makes a suicide attempt but he finds out that it is normal. The technicians reveal that almost everyone survives. This reminds Montag how empty and pointless this life is. Towards the end of the book, nothing is left of Montag’s old life. However, he is told about the phoenix which burns itself but is reborn. Granger says, “And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we're got on damn thing the phoenix never