Research Paper On Fahrenheit 451

In dystopian literature, authors typically write about a society centered around government control, censorship, and technology to warn readers about what society could eventually lead to. Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel, was written in 1953 by Ray Bradbury. At the time, the Nazi book burnings, atomic bombs, and McCarthyism were prevalent. This event significantly impacted Ray Bradbury's writing by incorporating censorship, book burning, and atomic bombs into his novel in order to predict what could potentially occur in the future. Another popular dystopian work is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut in 1961. The story is about the government controlling citizens by forcing them to wear physical and mental handicaps that alter their intelligence

Bradbury's purpose in writing about government control impacting identity is to demonstrate to readers that the government is able to drastically change people's identities. Bradbury accomplishes this through the use of personification and simile. In section two of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, titled The Sieve and the Sand, the main character Guy Montag has possession of books, which goes against the laws of society because of the profound knowledge found in books that the government does not want people to discover. Montag is a firefighter, and in this society, the role of a firefighter is to discover if anyone is in possession of books and burn them. Montag has been caught in possession of books by Captain Beatty and has been given twenty-four hours to turn in his books, all while having a mechanical hound hunt him down for breaking the law. Montag is trying to find someone to help him understand the books and the words contained inside them. Montag then goes to seek guidance from the old man that he met at a park a while ago and wants to

While Montag is on a train on his way to visit the old man, Bradbury states, "The people were pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great airtrain fell down its shaft in the earth (75). Bradbury utilizes personification in this part of the text in order to show how controlled the citizens in this society are by the government and to emphasize how this amount of control even leads to the point where the train falls into conformity. This is significant because it allows the reader to see how people's ways of acting in this society are based on them giving in to what society wants, preventing them from having a mind of their own. The use of personification highlights government control by giving a human characteristic to a non-living thing to reflect on how the government is able to control everything in society, including these non-living things. It also allows the reader to understand the emphasis that Bradbury placed in order to highlight his warning towards readers and people in society. This illuminates the fact that Bradbury uses personification to highlight the importance that government control has on identity and advances this topic by showing how the people and things in the society of Fahrenheit 451 act the way they do because