Literature Review – Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Dystopic American Literature on Censorship, Reality TV
Oct 23, 2009
Guy Montag is a fireman – this means his job is to report to the homes of criminals suspected of harbouring books and to burn every page he can find, cleansing the world with a gout of flame. However, Montag is also a kind soul that struggles with a deep secret – he desperately wishes to read and to learn more from these forbidden texts of literature, art, and history.
The Role of Manufactured or Manipulated History
A crucial theme in Fahrenheit 451 is the role played by the manufactured history of the police state in which Montag lives. On the daily walk home from the fire station, Montag begins to talk with his “eccentric” teenage friend, Clarissa, about the role that firemen have historically served.
They walked still farther, and the girl said, “Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?
“No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”
“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.
He laughed.
She glanced quickly over. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don't know.” he started to laugh again and stopped. “Why?”
“You laugh when I haven't been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I've asked you.”
This passage is particularly illuminating in that it shows that Montag lives in a society that, due to censorship, is now at the complete behest of their media for any sense of meaningful history.
History has been distorted to the point where Montag, a lifelong fireman from a line of the same profession, has no idea as to the true history of his work. Clarissa, daughter of a subversive family, is privy to the true narrative of history through education given to her by her uncle, amongst others.
Reality Television as Agent of Acquiescence, Pervasive Marketing
Another extremely compelling facet of the novel is the discussion of the vapid nature of reality television, and the pervasive and attention-grabbing nature of technological media. Several instances come immediately to mind – usually centered around Mildred Montag, Guy's wife.
This is by no means incidental – Mildred Montag is a crucial and often overlooked character in the framework of the novel's narrative. She is absolutely beholden to the TV parlor, where the walls have been replaced with enormous television screens in stunning high definition and extremely loud audio. Mildred Montag lives a world of five-minute romances, two-minute comedies, and a plastic Jesus that preaches the virtue of consumerism as piety – hucking items that “every worshipper absolutely needs”.
On one wall, a woman smiled and drank orange juice simultaneously. How does she do both at once? thought Montag, insanely. In the other walls an x-ray of the same woman revealed the contracting journey of the refreshing beverage on its way to her delighted stomach!
Abruptly the room took off on a rocket flight into the clouds, it plunged into a lime-green where blue fish ate red and yellow fish.
A minute later, Three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off each others limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter.
Two minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air.
“Millie, did you see that?”
“I saw it, I saw it!”
Montag reached inside the parlor wall and pulled the main switch. The images drained away, as if the water had been let from a gigantic crystal bowl of hysterical fish.
The three women turned slowly and looked with unconcealed irritation and then dislike at Montag.
Mildred is thematically the most ominous character in Fahrenheit 451 precisely because she is emblematic of the average citizen of Bradbury's future America. She is heavily medicated, and abuses prescription painkillers to a lethal degree. Mildred, and her equally ignorant friends, are infantile in their education and ability to think critically and abstractly, beholden entirely to increasingly vapid, base, and violent audiovisual media.
Her lone goal in life is to persuade Montag to install the fourth-wall, making the parlor a total immersion, a complete escape from any reality but that which is provided to her in hypersensory detail.
This should speak volumes of the danger of anti-intellectualism and a reliance on vapid reality television in comprising increasing amounts of our television programming.
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 – Dystopic Prescience and Food for Thought
As a piece of literature, Fahrenheit 451 is concisely written and wholly thematic, concerning itself with many emergent social problems that continue to plague our postmodern society.
As the novel draws to a close with the eradication of the pre-established order and a glimmer of hope amongst the rusting train tracks populated by wandering philosophers, scientists, and scholars – Bradbury makes plain the sentiment that knowledge is power, that education and the capacity for thought and reflection are necessities rather than luxuries, and that we should all be wary of the media we encounter.
Other Articles on Dystopic or Political Literature by Nicholas Morine
Those interested in human nature and the struggle of kindness may want to read a review of John Steinbeck's The Pearl. Science fiction lovers who enjoyed this book might also enjoy Reading William Gibson's Neuromancer, or perhaps consider an article on Writing Your Own Science Fiction.
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