The Consequences of Ignorance: Fahrenheit 451 and Ignorance in Our World Ray Bradbury believes that “if we insure that by the end of its sixth year every child in every country can live in libraries to learn almost by osmosis, then our drug, street-gang, rape, and murder scores will suffer themselves near zero.” His book Fahrenheit 451 showcases a world full of ignorance, therefore, by inferring the inverse of his previous scenario, it is too a world full of manipulation and crime. The naive among us believe that it isn’t their duty to protect themselves from this ignorance, that it is a task too arduous and time consuming for their liking, but this thinking is flawed, proven so by Bradbury’s hypothetical. Bradbury’s theme of how the general …show more content…
In the book “Fahrenheit 451,” Faber says to “let the war turn off the ‘families.’ Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces” (Bradbury 84) in response to Montag, who wants to take immediate action in the name of books. Faber reasons that people are enjoying being ignorant, and will not listen to crazed lunatics ranting about books until they are out of their “dark age”. At first glance this way of thinking may seem flawed; what does the war have to do with ignorance? What would happen if their war did not coincidentally happen during their ignorance? Once you take into account the evidence presented in the previous paragraph, it starts to make more sense: an ignorant society will eventually destroy itself because it cannot avoid past mistakes. An example of this in Fahrenheit 451 is at the end of the book when nuclear war broke out between America and another undisclosed country. America had started and won 2 atomic wars since 1960 (the book takes place at some unknown time in the future), and throughout the book planes are heard and seen flying overhead, indicating that America is constantly at war. The general populace, and by extension the leaders in power, talk nonchalantly about these wars, not seeming to understand what horror they’ve inflicted on their enemies. Mr. and Mrs. Phelps even seem indifferent to each other's deaths; Mr. Phelps told her to “don’t cry…get married again, and don’t think of me,” in the event that he dies in the war. Once ignorance has spread too far, the only cure is to wait as it inevitably destroys