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Essay Draft
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In the dystopian world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, controversy is considered a bad thing. Throughout the novel we see recurring/constant examples of characters being exposed to what we could consider the “truth,” often through
literature, and we see how this knowledge is instantly equated with sadness. When Mildred’s friend, Mrs. Phelps, starts crying after Montag reads a
poem out loud, instead of recognizing these tears as an expression of a
positive resonation for Mrs. Phelps, Mildred immediately gets angry and assumes
this unexpected burst of emotion is negative. In this world where books are
burned, fire chief Captain Beatty claims, “colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White
people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on the tobacco and cancer of the
lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.” To the people of this world(?) it seems
illogical to expose the truth when all it does is cause disagreement.
This idea clearly infers that the society is against different
opinions and wants everybody to think the same way. In addition to this being
an absurd claim, it seems that both preventing
and maintaining an entire general public without/from
having personal and varied beliefs would be nearly impossible to achieve. The most unique quality about humans, as
oppose to robots and machines, is our ability to think for ourselves. We can
process information from our surroundings and each form our own opinions from a
unique perspective. If abnormal
information shown to characters like Mrs. Phelps causes such an intense reaction,
it seems the citizens of the society are pretty brainwashed, thus inferring the
government has set up a very strategic system that is fairly successful in
limiting and controlling what people are exposed to. So how is controversy
prevented?
One way to think about this is to consider the role of technology in
the book. Technology itself is used as a form of censorship to suppress
multiple things. It not only fills the gap of natural hunger for information
that is present without books, but is also employed to limit human interaction.
We’ll see Mildred, for example, so wrapped up with her various devices that she
rarely has time for any meaningful interactions with her husband, Montag. The impediment of human interaction is vital
in preventing controversy because with conversation comes both disagreement, and new ideas, which leads to
more disagreement, more ideas, and back again. Controversy is prevented
in this society because technology
operates as the expurgation of human interaction, thus creating a world of
uniform thought in which nobody has a way of forming their own opinions.
First and foremost, technology is a cover up for the gap that becomes
present without books. Although often unconsciously, people love to learn, love
to understand, love to observe. This comes through all types of media: books,
magazines, television, film. A world without any of these “information feeders”
would be quite empty, and leave people alone and confused.
People need to be told what to believe–we see this quite evidently in
the novel, as nearly the entire society is brainwashed and does exactly what
they’re told. People are so dependent on their countless devices such as parlor
walls and seashells because they’d be lost without them. And when we see
characters like Mrs. Phelps exposed to information that, unlike most media,
doesn’t have a concrete command or “answer,” per se, the immaturity and
bewilderment is astonishing(/clear).
Just like Mrs. Phelps realizes, there’s more of a freedom of
expression that comes through books, writing, literature. There’s more room for
interpretation, especially because of the lack of visuals. With visual media, the
information we receive is more concrete because we get to see, and that is
definitely something most people really believe and trust. With dialogue and
sound as well, the same is true for what we hear. So in fact, using this type
of media makes it easier to persuade and convince people because there’s less
room for people to form their own opinions. Using technology to provide this, the
government can control what people believe.
Right from get-go we see Mildred intensely absorbed in her world of
technology. In one of the first few scenes, Montag comes into the dining room one
morning and approaches Mildred, ready to have a conversation with her, only for
her to respond with a nod because “she was an expert at lip reading from ten
years of apprenticeship at Seashell ear thimbles.” Mildred has adapted to this
life style so much that she now chooses electronics over family. In fact,
technology has become her family,
what with the “aunts and uncles” of the “parlor walls”: she goes to these
imaginary relatives that are so real to her that even “they” know her better
than her own husband does. Mildred is a fair example of the majority of the
society in which technology has hugely limited human interaction.
With human interaction often comes controversy, because conversation
is all about comparing opinions. What often triggers the controversy, however,
is outside sources that cause debate: exactly why books are such a threat to
the society. In this world, the solution to this controversy is simply burning
the books: as Captain Beatty argues in his long, persuasive lecture to Montag,
“colored people don’t like Little Black
Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on the tobacco
and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.” The
problem deepens, though, when we start to question what is really meant by controversy, because it very well could
be a cover up for something deeper. Controversy typically means the
disagreement of ideas, but in this context it’s more about the ideas themselves
than about the disagreement. When people interact with each other, ideas are
concocted. There’s this unstated yet vital claim that idea as always lead to
controversy, and that controversy is bad. Beatty claims that books are burned
to keep people happy. So he’s also saying that books and ideas make people
unhappy. There’s so much to be analyzed about this idea chain that clearly, the
government tries to rarely address because they themselves know that it’s
fairly illogical.
In some
ways, though, Beatty’s claim–a way for readers to see the ideals of the society in
general–does seem to make sense: maybe it would just be easier to have
everybody think the same way. But the way that many characters handle their
feelings and reactions when exposed to ideas that are outside of their status
quo shows their insecurity and the faults in this system.
Overall, they seem to be
successful in making “controversial ideas” look like a bad thing. (yes, mrs. Phelps becomes “unhappy” when
she hears Dover Beach. But it is the
design of and the circumstances within the society that makes this reaction
inevitable.)
Technology is a form of censorship, but what does censorship really
mean? It’s all about fear; having power and control.
Beginning of Conclusion:
As a censor, a way to prevent human interaction, and a barracade of(to)
controversy, technology the root of so much more than it initially seems. From
the instability and immaturity of the characters to the lack sensitivity and
expression to the indoctrinating ways of life, all the societal issues within
Fahrenheit 451 are a result the distraction caused by technology. (add more)
Although it could easily be dismissed as science-fiction, the world of
Fahrenheit 451 is disturbingly similar to our world today in more ways then initially obvious.
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