Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy” (78). A timely topic that displays how happiness can be achieved is one that is significant to the present. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this statement is largely involved in Montag’s journey because it expresses how his community was not viewing happiness in the correct way. The dystopian society of this novel is built off of beliefs that to be happy, one can not have any conflict that will require thinking and deep conversations with one another. Although this may seem ideal, it does not leave any room for learning, which Montag yearns to change. Bradbury’s novel argues that both controversial topics and learning experiences are necessary in order to live a life full of happiness. Throughout the book, Bradbury emphasizes that there is

In the novel, Beatty describes to Montag how censoring and hiding all the needed knowledge from books allows everyone to live conflict-free by referencing, “If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood.” (Bradbury 58). Montag knows that by eliminating this information, no one is able to achieve happiness because people need to learn from their experiences and they are not able to do so if they can not think logically. Furthermore, from “The Sieve and the Sand,” Montag and Faber converse about why books were banned in the first place and Faber connects this to a metaphor by stating, “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. Comfortable people want only waxed moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless” (Bradbury 79). Through this message, Faber explains that the community taking away all the aspects of life from its people does not grant any learning to be done because it does not bring forward uncomfortable situations to grow