Technology In Fahrenheit 451

“Around 1 billion people today live with a mental illness, with approximately 75% seeking help.” In 1953, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 imagined a world where books are banned because it is thought that too much knowledge is dangerous. The novel also demonstrates how technology greatly influences people’s thinking. The main character Guy Montag, often referenced as Montag, is a firefighter who has no problem with his job, until one day he is called to burn down a house due to the owner’s book usage. Montag gets a sudden surge of curiosity when the woman whose house is being burnt would rather die with her books than be taken to jail. Montag digs deeper and realizes everything that is wrong with this society. He uses the help of an old college

In the novel, people use sleeping pills to help calm their mind after spending all day with technology. The sleeping pills are beneficial to people to help them rest, but they are only treating a symptom and not providing a cure for the mental illness. The sleeping pills can be dangerous as well shown when Montag’s wife, Mildred, takes an entire bottle of sleeping pills, overdosing but doesn’t feel the need to discuss the problem the next morning. It is implied that mental health is left untreated when Montag tells the reader that, “The object he had sent tumbling with his foot now glinted under the edge of his own bed. The small crystal bottle of sleeping tablets which earlier today had been filled with thirty capsules and which now lay uncapped and empty in the light of the tiny flare” (Bradbury 11). The emptying of the bottle proves that mental health is left untreated in Fahrenheit 451 because the people just go through the day and then take a sleeping pill to calm their mind. This issue is also similar to the modern day because there are some powerful medications that can calm mental illness, but too much can be extremely harmful. “In the beginning of the twenty-first century psychotropic medications provide the dominant form of treatment for mental health problems, from the most to the least severe, although many professionals accept that the drugs control symptoms rather than provide cures” (Mental Health). Despite there being treatment some don't seek it. In Lee K. Lerner and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner’s article “Mental Health”, published in Gale Science Online Collection, they report that, “Mental illnesses affect tens of millions of people each year, with less than half (about 44 percent) of those people receiving any form of treatment”. The treatment of mental health is better than Bradbury predicted because in Fahrenheit 451 there are very few