The Influences Of Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Vinayak Kannan
Mrs. Onions
6/4/2015
The Influences of Fahrenheit 451
A book is only as powerful as the words written in it. Or perhaps the power in a book comes from not the words themselves but rather the ideas behind them. Or to take it a step further, a book’s true power lies in what it evokes in its reader, for what point is there to literature if the reader does not think, feel and act in response?
Literature has helped move human civilization throughout history, from propagating knowledge and religion to inspiring poets and revolutions. Despite their influential past, books are often forgotten in modern times dominated by television and the Internet. Ray Bradbury, in his novel Fahrenheit 451, speculates about a dystopia where books

In the novel, the government abandons the right to freedom of expression, a basic tenet of the American constitution, resorting instead to burning books and unrelentingly persecuting those who object. It sends officials, ironically called “firemen”, to burn banned books and apprehend those who have books in their procession. Dissenters in Bradbury’s dystopia are either imprisoned or forced into exile. While seemingly far fetched from our governing bodies today, this Orwellian government actually finds its influence from Red Scare that plagued American politics. After World War II, communist USSR was rapidly expanding, democracy was thought to be a dying ideal and America was enveloped in anticommunist fervor. As nation after nation joined the Warsaw Pact, many Americans, from civilian to political leaders, began to fear socialism penetrating America’s shield of democracy. The Rosenberg Trial further solidified such fears in the American mind. In these trials, Russian spies embedded in the American government were unmasked and executed. Discovering communists within our own governing bodies sent the public into a paranoid frenzy. The Congress formed the HUAC, the House of Un-American Activities Committee, and began aggressively pursuing communist sympathizers suspected of collaborating with the USSR.

Bradbury often has described himself as “a preventer of futures, not a predictor of them” ("Fahrenheit 451"). He certainly did not foresee societies’ eventual demise; rather he sought to use his novels to steer us away from their dystopian settings. Unfortunately though, our present day society bears an eerily disconcerting resemblance to Bradbury’s predictions. We spend far more time consuming wasteful programming on the television and Internet than reading books (Statista). Television shows such as Keeping Up With the Kardashians are wildly popular while books on economic debate rot away in the back of libraries. Religious and political extremists regularly burn books taking the place of Bradbury’s “firemen”. Perhaps Bradbury’s dystopian extravaganzas are not as comfortingly far fetched as previously