Guvernement manipulation

The title is the temperature at which paper burns at and that is a very fitting title
because almost the whole book revolves around the book burning. Fahrenheit 451 is
a science fiction novel written by Ray Bradbury and published in October 1953. The
narrator of the book is both third-person and in Guy Montag’s point of view.
Fahrenheit 451 takes place in future America and it is set in the future dystopian
world where books are banned, and the government is manipulating the society. The
government does not want people to have their own free thinking. But there are some
people that are more special and that do the opposite, like Montag.

The protagonist in Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag and he is a fireman. His job is not
to put fires out but, it is to burn books because it is illegal to have them. In the
beginning of the novel, Guy Montag begins to question the society and his life when
he meets his neighbor, Clarisse. Clarisse asks him some deep questions for example
“Are you happy?’’ (7). He realizes that he is not happy whit his life. On the job one
day, he encountered a woman who refused to leave the house with the books inside.
Montag’s boss Captain Betty suggests that they should leave her and light the fire
anyway, but Montag protested. The woman took the matters into her own hands and
lighted the match herself, that left Montag shaken. After that he steals a book from
the scene of the crime. The same night he hides the book beneath his pillow, so his
wife will not see it. He asked her “there must be something in the books, things we
can’t imagine.” (48). He also asks if his wife knows anything about Clarisse because
he did not see her in a while. She says that the family moved away and that Clarisse
was hit by a car.

The government is entertaining the society with technology and in that way
manipulating them. People have big screens that cover the whole wall in their living
rooms and the screens take over their lives and tell them what to think. The TV is like
a family to them. The society behave like robots in a sense. They just follow the
program of life and do not question it until the end of their lives. Montag’s wife named
Mildred is an example of the manipulation. She spends her days in front of a TV. One
day Mildred asks Montag if he wants to watch television with her and her friends. But
he refuses and asks her “Millie? Does the White Clown love you?” (73). She did not
answer back. He tried to say to Mildred that the TV is nonsense and not important,
but she is brainwashed and does not understand what Montag wants her to know. He
also asked her “does your family ‘love’ you, love you very much, love you with all of
their heart and soul, Millie?” she said, “why do you ask a silly question like that?”
(73). After her answer, he felt like he wanted to cry because he wanted her to
understand the society they live in.

Like I said in the beginning the book was published in 1951. That is so unbelievable
because Ray Bradbury’s book have so much in common with today’s society. Ray is
a real time traveler. Today’s society is truly affected by social media and internet. The
entertainment in the book is television and that is because the TVs started to come in
to Bradbury’s society in late 19th century. But now we have things like computers,
smartphones and many more advanced technologies. The most popular
entertainment app right now is YouTube. On YouTube you can watch everything
from cartoons to movies. The most watched videos on YouTube are vlogs. People
that vlog film their own life and post it on internet. The people that watch them
instead of living their own life are like the people in the book but nut that brain
washed. But it is mind blowing how Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 had so
much in common with today’s society.

Ray Bradbury wanted to warn the people what will happen if they stopped to read
books, he also wanted to say that the easy path is going to leave you sad and empty.
The people in books society were always “happy” and the book shows how a thinker
in that society will act. You can not have a society their everyone is happy that is
utopian but Fahrenheit 451 shows that the only feelings that matter are the real ones.