Fahrenheit 451 - Conformity and Society

Brianna Rosa

Prof. Farrell

English102

4 March 2016

Conformity and Society

Human beings are defined as “social animals” since interaction with others is a natural quality of living in a society. While human beings are interacting, society and its laws and regulations have a huge impact on the individual. When an individual is faced with a social pressure, many tend to conform to an idea that they believe is expected from the crowd. The person will conform to the idea that the majority find socially acceptable. Conformity is a social issue that is prevalent through many works of literature. Conformity is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real or imagined pressure of social norms/ group pressure. (Saul McLeod 2007)

A work of literature that expresses the social issue of conformity would be Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Guy Montag starts out as a politically correct fireman who loves doing his job, which is burning books. He lives in a society where reading is illegal and being intellectual is frowned upon. On his way home one day, he meets a young lady named Clarisse who loves to read. Montag now has a newfound desire to change society’s way of thinking for the better, and eventually the curiosity spreads to Montag and he begins to steal books. Montag gets so caught up in stealing and keeping books that he forgets what his occupation really is. His wife and boss eventually find out what he is doing and the firemen come and raid the house. The firemen find and burn all the books in the house.

 One of Bradbury's most important forms of expressing conformity would be using language as mind control. Language is the most important way to structure human thought. A human can only structure and formulate ideas from the language that they already know. Without a word or words to express an idea, the idea itself is impossible to conceive and retain. By the government taking away all books, they control what a person learns and limits their learning abilities. People who were still reading, as books were becoming a threat were considered snobby because it made others feel and look stupid. Reading books placed an uncomfortable stigma on one that made one want to stop reading to avoid being made fun of. Ultimately language as mind control turns into the destruction of will and imagination. The firemen and government are now in control of burning the books and conforming people to the government. Therefore ideal for the conforming government. The government relies on the lack of independent thought so that they can come in and conform everybody to theirs.

In Fahrenheit 451, psychological manipulation was a great way that made people conform to the government. Mildred, Montags’ wife, is a product of this mindless game. She watches television on three walls and hopes that one day she will be able to watch it from all four walls. The television broadcasts shows that are designed to keep people from thinking for themselves. The programming is so simplistic and unenlightening, yet Mildred watches it faithfully. She conforms to society but doing and saying what they want her to. As expressed in Teen ink, the "Television merges as the important influence in children's lives today" (Winn 259). As people are watching the TV today, commercials and TV shows are subconsciously controlling how, when, where and what a person thinks about. Katie, a young teen, explains that commercials and television shows have an underlying message that controls the viewers. The media dictates how a person should act and what to buy and this overall makes the youth conform more and more to what they think is socially acceptable. Thus causing conformity to be a big social issue since it's being shown throughout a person's everyday life.