Authorial message in “Intellect” and Fahrenheit 451
There exists a philosophical Greek proverb, “Great minds think alike”. The relation between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Intellect” and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is an exemplary instance of the concept’s realization as Emerson’s poem communicates the identical authorial messages as Bradbury’s dystopian novel. Set in a future American society in which books are legally prohibited, Fahrenheit 451 is about Guy Montag, the protagonist whose profession obligates him to burn all books, beginning to demand the truths of life and rebelling against the totalitarian government that has kept them covert throughout history. In 241 pages, the novel explores and expounds the three ideas presented in the four …show more content…
Next, Bradbury communicates the significance of thinking through the portrayal of a society in which critical thinking is not only discouraged but also prohibited. For example, in order to prevent such ability, the totalitarian government instills into every individual, the idea that “books say nothing” and that they contain nothing but “non-existent people, figments of imagination... one professor calling another an idiot” (30). Through this manipulation, they disguise an unethical deprivation of a basic human right as a simple elimination of an unnecessary nuisance. As a direct result of the inability to thinking critically, people lose defining qualities of humanitarianism and the society becomes a monotonously functioning machine replete with callousness, violence, and extreme conformity. The novel’s society exemplifies one of many catastrophic theoretical outcomes of failure to actively exercise the freedom of thought and through this, Bradbury effectively illustrates his message. Lastly, Fahrenheit 451 shows the danger of the influence of emotion in a human community exceeding that of intellect. When Captain Beatty says that "we must all be alike… Each
There exists a philosophical Greek proverb, “Great minds think alike”. The relation between Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Intellect” and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is an exemplary instance of the concept’s realization as Emerson’s poem communicates the identical authorial messages as Bradbury’s dystopian novel. Set in a future American society in which books are legally prohibited, Fahrenheit 451 is about Guy Montag, the protagonist whose profession obligates him to burn all books, beginning to demand the truths of life and rebelling against the totalitarian government that has kept them covert throughout history. In 241 pages, the novel explores and expounds the three ideas presented in the four …show more content…
Next, Bradbury communicates the significance of thinking through the portrayal of a society in which critical thinking is not only discouraged but also prohibited. For example, in order to prevent such ability, the totalitarian government instills into every individual, the idea that “books say nothing” and that they contain nothing but “non-existent people, figments of imagination... one professor calling another an idiot” (30). Through this manipulation, they disguise an unethical deprivation of a basic human right as a simple elimination of an unnecessary nuisance. As a direct result of the inability to thinking critically, people lose defining qualities of humanitarianism and the society becomes a monotonously functioning machine replete with callousness, violence, and extreme conformity. The novel’s society exemplifies one of many catastrophic theoretical outcomes of failure to actively exercise the freedom of thought and through this, Bradbury effectively illustrates his message. Lastly, Fahrenheit 451 shows the danger of the influence of emotion in a human community exceeding that of intellect. When Captain Beatty says that "we must all be alike… Each