Loss Of Information In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

In the world today, the spread of information and data are key to societal development. Without this free flow of knowledge, technological and medical developments would never occur. Political movements and protests would never succeed. Democracy wouldn’t exist. Everything good in the world can be traced to the trading of ideas between people. If information ceased to circulate, what would happen to society? In the dystopian future laid out by Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451, when the world loses quality information, the leisure to digest information, and the right to carry out actions based on what’s learned, all hope for the future is lost. The quality of information in the world of Guy Montag is sufficiently lacking. There is no time or

When not working and sleeping, the people constantly have distractions thrown in their way, keeping them occupied. In the subway, while Montag is trying to read his bible, advertisements blare over the loudspeakers, making him unable to read his book, “The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great tonload of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass” (75). Montag can’t concentrate on his book with the white noise of the advertisements piercing his ears, while the rest of the train’s passengers just sat and listened to the sound of the voice. The bread-and-circuses distraction of the people didn’t come about accidentally either, “If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it… cram them full of non-combustible data… then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving… so bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex.” (58). The government is purposely shoving bright lights into the eyes of the people to keep them distracted from the darkness of the world around them. If the people started to think, than they’d notice everything wrong with their society; the high murder rate, the substance abuse, their inability to remember

Much of what’s keeping these people quiet is themselves. Whenever the firemen are summoned to a house, the books are burned, and those that owned them are arrested. This fear keeps many of those enlightened by reading from speaking up, so much so that to one old woman, self-immolation was a preferable outcome to being forced out of her home and her books, and into police custody. Even Faber, the one who enables Montag to escape the tyranny of the city, knows himself to be a coward, “...I’m still safe at home, tending my fright with a maximum of comfort and a minimum of chance” (87). Faber is too scared to send himself to the front lines and act on what he knows. And even if he did, who would listen to him? It’s not only fear of being caught keeping readers quiet, it’s that the non-readers fear learning. Most of those who don’t read don’t want to learn, “I’ve always said, poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness… silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words” (97). Why should the readers act in a world they’d risk everything they have to try and educate a mass who won’t listen? Information is impossible to act on, as no one is going to heed the warnings of those who see through the