Technology In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Technology has seen its darkest days in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, where Bradbury is hinting that technology will become the destruction of our society. Ray Bradbury paints a picture of a dystopian society, where people are taught not to think. Firemen now burn books, and people find comfort in driving speeds up to 100 mph and hitting animals. Bradbury also sheds light on how technology has evolved, and how addicted people have become to it. Though this book was written in 1953, more than 60 years ago, the depiction of technology in the novel still stays relevant. Through the ferocity of The Mechanical Hound, and Bradbury’s use of Mildred to show how technology can affect people, technology is portrayed in a negative light in Fahrenheit

The Hound is a bringer of peril in the form of a robotic canine, savagely punishing those who go against modern ideals, such as the reading and hoarding of books, by injecting them with lethal toxins. It quite obviously has exceptional technology going for it, as it stores "so many amino acids, so much sulphur, so much butterfat and alkaline", which makes it capable of tracking up to ten thousand victims to their inevitable demise. Dogs originally were companions to firefighters, being used to sniff out the weak or injured, but have proved themselves to be quite the opposite in the present Fahrenheit 451 society, being used exclusively to find and destroy. Montag comes to recognize this, and even sympathizes with it, when he says, “(It’s) sad, because all we put into (The Hound) is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know." (Bradbury, 31) This shows that Montag recognizes what technology has come to in the novel, and even goes as far as to sympathize with the beast,

The Hound, only knowing how to kill, displays the dark and negative turn technology has faced in the novel, where, with technology, the government has turned a tool used for the sake of others, to a robotic beast capable of killing people mercilessly that could have been used for a much greater good. Furthermore, The Hound portrays technology in a negative light in the novel through its merciless behaviour when it attacks. When The Mechanical Hound attacks Montag, Montag barely dodges a full dose of morphine that the hound would have injected into him, killing him. Montag then goes on to attack The Hound with a flamethrower, but even then, the hound doesn't give up easily. The narrator explains that The Mechanical Hound “seemed to want to get back at him and finish the injection” (Bradbury, 120), showcasing the complete and utter savagery of The Hound, that even when it is close to dying, it won't give up on doing the destructive role assigned to it. The Hound’s use for entertainment is showed blatantly in the society’s media, where people view the robot’s killing activity as a fun game they can partake in. When Montag made his escape from the Hound, a camera was placed on it so viewers could see what was going on. News channels and radio stations were all broadcasting