Theme Of Dystopia In Fahrenheit 451

A dystopia is defined as a society in which the conditions of life include misery, oppression, poverty, etc. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag lives in a dystopia, where books are banned. Written in 1953, it is set in the future. We may not consider our world to be a dystopia, but the society envisioned by Bradbury strongly resembles our own. It is a world with violence among young adults, dwindling emphasis placed on education, and increasing threats of nuclear war. Since the time when the book was written, violence among teens has become more prevalent in our society. In the book, seventeen year-old Clarisse says this about her peers: “ I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other...Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks” (27). This resembles of society, especially in recent years. Car accidents are the top killer of those ages 16-19. More recently, though, we have seen this idea of kids killing kids. School shootings over the past 25 year have taken countless lives. In Bradbury’s time, this idea was absurd. Today, while a tragic event, it is not uncommon to turn on the news and hear about an event like this Similarly, the schools described in the book resemble our own. The schools

This is a threat that America still faces today. Montag wonders about the cause of the war that takes place in the book, saying, “Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s poor and we just don’t care if they are? … Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much?”(70). The United States is a very rich and prosperous country, making us a target for countries around the world. The only differences is, it sounds like the government in the book has nothing to do with foreign nations, whereas our government is very involved. Do we do