Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451

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Pages: 3

Societies Side by Side “Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge. There has to be somebody ready when it blows up.” The novel Farenheit 451depicts a futuristic, dystopian society. In the novel, the government has set many rules and regulations to not only control the knowledge and happiness of it’s inhabitants, but has also provided multiple technological advances. Although civilization in Farenheit 451 appears very different to that in our world today, digging deeper shows that happiness and technology are two apparent pieces that make each society exceedingly similar. To begin with, people have numerous ways of finding happiness. In farenheit 451, citizens distract themselves to the point of being “numb”. …show more content…
In the novel, the community in which Montag lives in is highly developed, futuristic, and dependent on technological advances. To illustrate, their is a mechanical hound used by the police to enforce the law. It “...slept bud did not sleep, lived but did not live in it’s gentle humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel…” (p.11) This society uses a robot rather than police officers to maintain it’s rules and regulations amongst the general population. Likewise, the government in Farenheit 451 has made books illegal; firefighters are trained and paid to burn books whenever they are discovered. For this reason, the citizens in the community don’t appreciate what books have to offer. “What do the books say, he wonders- nothing you can teach or believe.” (p.29) Now, technology is also of great importance. Numerous people and companies utilize phones, TV’s, computers, clones, weapons, digital clocks, and even updated forms of transportation to better their lives. In contrast, books are highly valued across the world. They are used for teaching, learning, presenting, and just plain old entertainment. To conclude, technology is detrimental in each society, but they still contain differences in addition to their