Research Paper On Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 has sold more than 10 million copies since its original publication in 1953. Since then, Fahrenheit 451 has become a well-known classic for its thought provoking theme and unique interpretation of the world. Even though the story was written over sixty years ago, many of Bradbury’s predictions about the culture of the modern world came true. The story takes place in a country where books have been made illegal, and the majority of citizens spend most of their time engulfed in technology. It is typical for the people to have electronic devices in their ears and to spend a large portion of their income on entertainment rooms. The people in the story live such fast-paced lives that everyone drives their cars at over

The people spend thousands of dollars on entertainment rooms where immense televisions make up the entirety of the walls. Similar to this, Americans spend an average of $2,500 a year on various forms of entertainment, including flat screen televisions. Though modern televisions have not yet become as extensive as those in Fahrenheit 451, they have been dramatically increasing in size over time. In Bradbury’s novel, there are also people constantly listening to news broadcasts and music through earpieces described as “thimble radios” (Bradbury 12). These Seashell earpieces are so prevalent in the society that it is typical for an individual to be “an expert at lip-reading” (Bradbury 18). In the modern world, people frequently listen to music through earbuds while they perform their daily tasks and activities. These earpieces are like “electronic bees” (Bradbury 16) in the way that they are constantly distracting people from the world around them. In the story, Bradbury depicts the ways in which technological advances affect the lives of everyday

In correlation with today’s society, the people move so rapidly that they only see the world as a “blur” (Bradbury 9). The people in the story do not take the time to slow down and observe the world around them, so they are oblivious to little things like the “dew on the grass in the morning” (Bradbury 9). Though people in today’s society do not drive at speeds as high as those in Fahrenheit 451, they are constantly in a rush to move from one thing to the next. This sense of urgency corresponds with the development of shorter attention spans, which eventually leads to the desire for “snap endings” (Bradbury 56). In today’s civilization as well as the story, people stray from physical books because they take too much “unnecessary, time-wasting thought” (Bradbury 58) to reach the ending. Instead, tabloids, digests, and short films have become people’s main source of information. People no longer wonder about the “meaning of things” (Bradbury 71), rather they want the most simple and convenient explanation for any of life’s questions. In Bradbury’s novel, he accurately portrays the high speed in which people today live their