Violence In Fahrenheit 451, By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury has written numerous novels during his lifespan of 92 years, including The October Country, The Martian Chronicles, and Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451, a novel written in 1953, is about a fictional future world where books are burned and the world has turned to violence. This is much like modern day today where violence erupts on a daily basis, and it seems that Bradbury was not far off with his prediction of the future. This essay will be discussing how the theme of violence is portrayed three times throughout the pages of Fahrenheit 451 and how those instances are able to relate back to our society today. Such instances include violence on knowledge by man, violence on man by machine, and violence on man by man. The theme of violence, in terms of violence on knowledge by man, is shown anytime a book is burned in Fahrenheit 451. Through the burning of these books, mankind is allowing for

The very first line of the book, “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 1) goes to show how necessary the burning of the books had become in order to subsidize the anger and frustration that many people had been feeling. The first page of this book is somewhat poetic, and is compared to a symphony of “blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history” (Bradbury 1). Through this comparison of book burning to that of a musical symphony, Montag is trying to show how poetic and carefree the burning of the books is, as he is showing it to be poetic and non-violent in nature. In part one of the novel, after asking if he would be working that night, Montag is quoted as “Right now I’ve got an awful feeling I want to smash things and kill things” (Bradbury 61). Here, it is shown that Montag might be heading to work simply for the reason that he wishes to act out on his violent instincts, and burning the books