Similarities Between 1984 And Fahrenheit 451

These novels have some glaring structural similarities, especially in character development. Both ‘1984’ and ‘Fahrenheit 451’ are collated into three parts centring on a man who lives a bland life until one day he meets a girl who changes his life. The oppressive nature of the regimes that Orwell and Bradbury have created is also very similar. These totalitarian states are governed by higher powers that are ambiguously personified into an image. Under Orwell’s dystopia, the population are oppressed by the image of ‘Big Brother’, whose appearance fits that of Joseph Stalin . ”the face of a man about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features.” This shows Orwell’s highly politically charged views against Stalin.

This foreboding imagery is a message to the people telling them not to cross the government and creating fear, like the face of Big Brother. This emblem could be polysemic symbolism for the Nazi Swastika, as it is the symbol of what the Government has created, what they stand for and what they aim to destroy. The name of the firemen creates an image itself. The connotations of a fireman is someone who prevents fires from breaking out, but in this distorted society that Bradbury creates, the firemen are the ones that begin the fires, making them distrustful, unlike the firemen in our society, with whom we trust our

Like in Orwell’s novel, this corrupts language and thought because it makes people fear books and by extension language. Through the destruction of books, language is also destroyed and like in ‘1984’, this does not allow language to grow, thus causing communication to become limited, however, Bradbury replaced the need for communication with the need for emersion in media, specifically television, which is controlled by the government. ‘“Will you turn the parlour [TV] off?” He asked “That’s my family.” “Will you turn it off for a sick man?” “I’ll turn it down.”’ This quotation outlines the higher concern for the television rather than other people. This was a message from Bradbury about what was going on during the years that he wrote ‘Fahrenheit 451’. In 1953, the year the novel was written and in Bradbury’s early, media had been revolutionised by the introduction of electronic-colour television and radio. Although sales were slow due to the expense, they swept the nation, making them more interested in sitting watching television or listening to the radio in silence, rather than sitting with family. This here is what Bradbury is trying to warn people about, that watching television and believing everything it says corrupts thought as the people are just processing what the television is telling them is right rather than what actually happened. This is apparent throughout the novel, one particular