Max Pockriss Mrs. Ganatra English 8 24 February 2023 Societal Problems Explored in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 The first thing I do every morning is reach for my phone. Whether it’s checking the notifications I’ve gotten overnight or the score of a game I didn’t get to watch the ending of, it’s always the very first thing. Technology is becoming a bigger part of our lives every day and it’s only getting worse. In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this is a major societal flaw. The novel, published in 1953, takes place in a dystopian society several years into the future. Montag, the main character, is a fireman whose job is to burn any remaining books, as they are banned in this civilization. After illegally getting his hands on a few books and further …show more content…
Although it’s an extremely important advancement, technology has its many downsides. In the society presented in Fahrenheit 451, technology is a major part of life. The people living there interact with their parlor walls more often than real people. Although it may sound hard to believe, this is slowly happening in our society, too. In the novel, there are gadgets called seashells, similar to modern-day wireless earbuds, that allow people to escape from reality. One night, Montag looks over at his wife Mildred with her seashells in her ears and realizes, “There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blackness above her in the ceiling” (Bradbury 39). This excerpt is very powerful, as it shows how technology has the ability to seemingly take over people's thoughts and isolate them from the outside world. Bradbury’s choice of words is extremely strong too. The word tamped, when describing the seashells in Mildred's ears, shows that they are extremely stuck in her ears, blocking anything and everything out. In addition to this, Bradbury repeats the word “far.” He does this to show that Mildred, when using this technology, is in a world very far away, not like ours. The government …show more content…
Ever since literature was banned, this society seems to be crumbling. Montag witnesses this first and after his wife’s attempted suicide. In addition to this, Montag watches a woman burn alive in refusal to part with her books. This takes a major toll on him and his felicity and he begins to question the prohibition of books. Montag recognizes this and says, "’ I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help’" (Bradbury 78). Montag is clearly unhappy, despite having everything he believes he needs to be happy. He, along with the rest of his community, thinks that technology is what brings people happiness. This also applies to our world today. Many believe that technology brings people joy, however, this is untrue. In fact, it can, and often does, bring the opposite. It frequently leads to people losing self-confidence, and devastatingly, it also drives people to suicide more often than you may