Farenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

Think of a society where firemen do not put out fires, but instead start fires on books, a society where people do not have any rights or freedom to express their thoughts about the past or the future, and where people do not have time to spend time with their partners; this is the society in the novel Fahrenheit 451. The government lied to society about books; they said that books are the cause of unhappiness in the world, and then they must get rid of all books; the government also lied, making society believe that firemen have always burned books to ashes, not put out fires. The concept and the message the book gets across is that, this is somewhat the society that we live in. In the novel, the government tries to create a utopia, which is basically a perfect society, as the government has people replacing family love with technology and by getting rid of all the books, which leads Guy Montag to rebel against the government. In this novel, I will discuss Montag’s change throughout the story, and a theme.

In order to keep people busy, the people have televisions the size of walls, because the government does not want the people to have any spare time to think about their past or the future. Montag’s wife, Mildred, shows how people have been lost in technology, because she sits in front of the television all day in the parlor on three television walls around her; she does not take care of her husband like a lot of other women in the society. She has spare time to watch the television, but no time to have a conversation with her husband. A quote from the book would be, when Montag was standing in the hall for a long time waiting for a response from Mildred; he asked “Do you want to go out tonight for a dinner?”, but she was too busy “reading her script in the TV parlor room”, and takes a while to answer his question. People in this society are unhappy; they just do not realize it. Sometimes they have trouble sleeping, have problems and do not know how to find a solution for their problems, and have to take sleeping pills to fall asleep. Montag says to his wife Mildred, “You took all the pills in your bottle last night. Oh, I wouldn’t do that because the bottle is empty”. Because of this, their minds do not work or function like they should; that is an example of how the government has manipulated its society to use different kinds of technology, such as television, music, and sleeping pills, as the society is misleaded.

In the beginning of the book, Montag says that the smell of kerosene is like perfume to him, but later on in the novel he states that he hates the smell. Montag used to be perfectly fine with burning books, until an accident occurs. After burning an old woman and her house, he starts to think about books and their significance. After this accident happens, he starts to steal books from libraries or houses he burns. Montag says, “I want you to teach me to understand what I read”. Montag’s life has underwent a huge change; he used to be just like any other normal person in society,