Losing Individuality In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, illustrates that conforming to society takes away your individuality and makes your identity a false one, which is inspired by the people around you. To start with, if you were the same as everyone else, there would be no new ideas or anything meaningful in your life. In the society of Fahrenheit 451 they were, “...turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be” (Bradbury 55). This quote allows us to see how the school system creates students in the same way, by not allowing them to think for themselves. From the beginning,

Along with conforming children at an early age, people that are older may have experienced different teaching, but instead of thinking for themselves, or having new ideas, they strive to be like everyone else. In the novel, Montag gets home from work, and “He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy” (Bradbury 9). This shows that Montag has just been pretending day after day, and feels that his life has no purpose. He has been going through the motions for so long, that he has grown to be unhappy. Montag isn’t living his life, just the life given to him, which again allows us to see why pushing yourself to be someone else leads to being unhappy and depressed. In the end, Ray Bradbury’s novel shows us that conforming to society does not allow us to be ourselves and does not allow us to have new ideas. In Fahrenheit 451, life is boring and dull. We can learn that trying to be like everyone else does NOT benefit us in the long run, it just makes us more