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Technology Over Social Interaction In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

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Technology Over Social Interaction What would life be like if technology is more important than family? In Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag questions many problems like that in his society. After Guy meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan, he starts to think for himself. People in his society do not normally think for themselves, and because of that, Guy is unable to understand how he truly feels about many situations. Guy’s inability to understand his emotions then leads to him to do something very illegal, reading books. By reading books, Guy puts everyone around him in danger of learning the truth. The characters Clarisse McClellan and Mildred in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 live in a culture with laws and strained relationships, and the culture also illustrates the themes of technology and censorship. The first aspect of the society in Fahrenheit 451 is the characters. One of those characters is Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse is an unusual person since she is open minded and thinks for herself. Because of her uniqueness, Guy becomes fascinated by her lifestyle: He said hello and then said, ‘What are you up to now?’ ‘I’m still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it’ ‘I don’t think I’d like that’ he said. ‘You might if you tried.’ ‘I never have’ She licked her lips. ‘Rain even tastes good.’ ‘What do …show more content…

She cannot comprehend what she is feeling, so she feels like the only way to cope with whatever she is feeling is by attempting suicide. After Mildred is treated for her suicide attempt, the people who treated her tell Montag that what she did is not uncommon. Many people, like Mildred, feel the same way as Mildred, and they also try to overdose on pills for the same reasons. Clarisse and Mildred are just two of the characters in the story. Besides the characters being an aspect of the story, the culture, which they fit into, is also an aspect of the

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721 Words | 3 Pages

Clarisse is recognized by Montag because she is his new neighbor. She begins to spit out the oddest thoughts to Montag who believes she is crazy. However, she begins to change the way Montag thinks and opens his eyes to the dullness of his life. One day Montag notices he does not see Clarisse on his way home from work anymore. He soon realized Clarisse either has disappeared or been killed.

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787 Words | 4 Pages

Nothing Is Ever As It Seems Looks can be deceiving, weather they are the cover of a book or the appearance of men and women . In some cases society and the world around us can be misleading. Between Clarisse’s outgoing personality and Mildred’s fear of change Guy Montag is set up to make a choice to go against a society that is largely misguided. Clarisse and Mildred are important to Montag’s life because Clarisse is incredibly interactive towards Guy and open his eyes to see the wrong, his wife, on the other hand, begs montag to keep things the way they are. Clarisse had her strange ways to interpret how society has formed over the years to lessen any confusing matters; although it was often that her strange ways in the category of being antisocial.

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255 Words | 2 Pages

In Fahrenheit 451, books are a controversial issue where they burn any home containing books, but even though all that, Clarisse and Mildred still have different views on books. This can is seen when Clarisse first meets Montag, and she ask Montag if he “ever reads any of the books [he] burns?’” (8). Showing how Clarisse is curious about books and what reading them is like. Mildred, however, is opposite because she could careless about books.

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600 Words | 3 Pages

The book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury consists of primary elements involving the dual nature of humanity. In a basic categorization of the society of Fahrenheit 451, there are those who conform to the government without question, and those who do not. Those like the character Mildred (housewife of the protagonist Guy Montag) are slaves to the technology ( e.g. Seashells, parlour walls) shoved down their throats by the government, as an attempt to trick the public into thinking that they are happy when they are not. However, there are also characters such as Clarisse (17year old girl), Faber (former English professor), and Montag who question the lack of substance in society and the unspoken contract between the governors and the governed. The dual nature of this society is seen in how particular characters react to the lack of depth and meaning to their lives as a result of the conformity and censorship by the government.

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450 Words | 2 Pages

What happens when we follow society too much? In the book Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, we meet the wife, Mildred, of the main character, Guy Montag. Mildred has become self-centered, robotic, and unfeeling due to the ways of society. First, you can tell Mildred is self-centered because she wants more and more for herself.

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1387 Words | 6 Pages

‘Are you [Guy Montag] happy?’”(Bradbury 10). This chipper personality directly contradicts that of Mildred Montag, the wife of Guy. She is a cold, miserable prototype of her shifting society. Her name means, one with gentle strength. Just by looking at the meaning of both female’s names, a clear contrast and favoritism in Clarisse is already found.

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544 Words | 3 Pages

Clarisse McClellan is the most significant character in the novel Fahrenheit 451. Clarisse plays a huge role in the storyline as she is the reason of Montag’s metamorphosis. She does this by making Montag question his surroundings, being a role model and changing Montag’s emotions towards others. Clarisse’s role and impact on Montag makes the most Important character.

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756 Words | 4 Pages

Ray Bradbury 's novel Fahrenheit 451 delineates a society where books and quality information are censored while useless media is consumed daily by the citizens. Through the use of the character Mildred as a foil to contrast the distinct coming of age journey of the protagonist Guy Montag, Bradbury highlights the dangers of ignorance in a totalitarian society as well as the importance of critical thinking. From the beginning of the story, the author automatically epitomizes Mildred as a direct embodiment of the rest of the society: she overdoses, consumes a vast amount of mindless television, and is oblivious to the despotic and manipulative government. Bradbury utilizes Mildred as a symbol of ignorance to emphasize how a population will be devoid of the ability to think critically while living in a totalitarian society. Before Montag meets Clarisse, he is

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1086 Words | 5 Pages

Some have named Ray Bradbury “the uncrowned king of the science-fiction writers” because of his imagination and beautiful way of making Fahrenheit 451 come to life. The book Fahrenheit 451 is one of the first books to deal with a future society filled with people who have lost their thirst for knowledge and for whom literature is a thing of the past. The author mainly portrays this world from the point of view of Montag, a man who has discovered the power that knowledge contains and is coming to grips with the fact that it is outlawed. However, the reader also gets to see what life is like for one of the people content in living a life lacking in independent thought and imagination through his wife, Millie.

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626 Words | 3 Pages

Fahrenheit 451 and the Use of Technology Phones, computers, TVs, and the internet dominate modern society. Technology and the lack of books is a very prominent part of the society and the storyline throughout Fahrenheit 451 as well. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the 1950s, but he described many different kinds of futuristic technologies, some of which we even see today. The technology that Bradbury describes in Fahrenheit 451 must have seemed unreasonable to readers in the 1950s, but we have seen that this technology is feasible indeed.

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670 Words | 3 Pages

As Montag strolling home one night, he spots Clarisse with her head tilted to the sky, seeing this Montag inquires to her as why she stay there facing the sky and she simply replies “I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in my mouth. It tastes like wine”(20). In the futuristic world that Bradbury creates, people who linger behind and smell the roses, much like Clarisse, seem crazy to the rest of society and fail to fit in with the crowd. She worries not about getting where she needs to go but focuses more on what was on the way. This leads Clarisse to seem mentally unstable and even she begins to believe it.

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450 Words | 2 Pages

Independence in Words Without the presence of words and books, one loses the ability to be independent, like most characters in Fahrenheit 451. The main character, Guy Montag, does not wish to be like everyone else; he wants to have the ability to consider things for himself. With all of the brand-new technology and the disappearance of books, he believes this is no longer possible. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, the presence of technology in society are used to prove the importance of reading, independence, and thinking for oneself.

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905 Words | 4 Pages

Fahrenheit 451 shows how people’s rights to free speech and media are essential to a free thinking society. Guy Montag, the main character, is a firefighter, which in his futuristic society means he burns books for the government because they are illegal due to the potentially controversial ideas they contain. Montag meets a girl named Clarisse, who helps him realize he’s not really content in how he’s living his life and in his relationships, which begins to change his viewpoint on the society’s standards. His wife Mildred, as well as the rest of society, are highly materialistic and shallow in their daily activities and interactions. Montag eventually steals a book during the fireman’s raid on a house, which leads him to seek out a man named Faber, who is an educated man, and helps encourage Montag to take steps to action.

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951 Words | 4 Pages

A predominate theme in Fahrenheit 451 is conformity. Bradbury utilizes the contrast between Mildred and Clarisse to compare the ideal, conforming citizen to the non-conforming outcast of society. Society believes that “books make people unhappy, they make them anti-social” (Bradbury 8). It also believes that the citizens should all be alike, equal and politically correct as to not offend “dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchant, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico” (57). Mildred conforms to these requirements, but Clarisse marches to her own drums.

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The world of Fahrenheit 451 is one without books. This difference in society has lead to a lack in personal connections and curiosity. Although most children of the society have fallen into this trap as well, Clarisse has not. “I rarely watch the ‘parlor walls’ or go to races or Fun Parks. So I have lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess.”

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