While Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, may have predicted our generation’s current reliance on technology, having the knowledge that technology would continue to advance is not making a prediction, and the book certainly did not succeed in grasping our unwillingness to surrender our individuality.
Ray Bradbury did not “predict” society’s advancement of technology. Technology, once it began centuries ago, has never stopped and will never stop advancing. While technology in the book, such as the wall-sized televisions and the beetle given to Montag by Faber, do show a similar level of technology we have today, knowing our technology would continue to advance was not a prediction. Being aware of the inevitable is not making a prediction.
Bradbury did, however, accurately predict society’s addiction to technology and severance from the outside world. Mildred, Montag’s wife, is an excellent example of this. Mildred is shown throughout the majority of the book watching television in their living room and paying little attention to anything else, including her husband. For example, Montag comes home to Mildred watching the wall television after work as Bradbury explains, “The living room. What a good job of labeling that was now. No matter when Montag came
…show more content…
One of the main ideas of Bradbury’s book was how the government did not allow citizens to have their own thoughts, feelings and independence. However, a sense of individuality in today’s world remains that has not been taken from us by anyone. The burning of the books in Fahrenheit 451 was indeed their government’s method of censoring information. However, while today’s government does have the power to expurgate information, they by no means use that power to the extreme level the authorities in Bradbury’s novel did. Without the availability of information - especially books - we would not have the ability of independent thought and