Branden Thanadabouth
Jarrett Black
Eng 10 XL/ Per.4
19 November 2014 Fahrenheit 451: Theme Analysis Essay
Fahrenheit 451, a novel by Ray Bradbury, is about a dystopian future that burns books for the sake of destroying someone’s individual thought so no one can receive the knowledge the books contain. Guy Montag, the main protagonist in this story, lives in a world where firefighters start the fire instead of extinguishing them, Montag being one of them. Clarisse McClellan,
Montag's neighbor and someone who is different from everyone else, tells Montag about books and asks him if he is happy. This question has Montag thinking about his happiness, his job, even his life. Fahrenheit 451 has all of us thinking in this kind of way, thinking about what we have, and what could happen to us when it is gone.
In today’s society, people really are not into books. People go to some sort of electronic technology that could give information easier than a book would. If books never existed, many things would change. People wouldn’t have an expansion into imagination like they would with books, they wouldn’t even have any sympathy because of the lack of ideas that they have from banning books. Books open a world of imagination that came from the person that wrote it.
Authors inspire other to open their imaginations. Montag’s wife, Mildred, is supposed to be an example of one of these people who do not have “imagination” or emotions. People in this world get to the point where they do not have any fun, so they have to use drug to have a sort of
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enjoyment or emotion. “‘We get these… for the door’”. Them having this machine for the frequency of the overdoses that are happening shows that people just want to have the feeling of emotion, but they don’t have the correct mindset to have these emotions by themselves. They cannot have these emotions with because of the lifelessness they have without these drugs to keep them going.
Books have a lot of meaning to