The book Fahrenheit 451 is the hyperbolized future of author Ray Bradbury’s perception of the society he was living in. He paints a picture of a shallow society incapable of deep thought that has banned reading to ‘protect themselves’. He has an entire country with their lives based around the television, and firemen who seek out and burn books. The main character, Guy Montag, is interrupted from being just another cog in the monotonous machine of this dystopian nation and forced to think about the books that he makes a living setting ablaze, and the society that would ban them. Lois Lowry’s The Giver is another dystopian novel that takes place in a society that blindly follows the rules, where knowledge is restricted and forbidden. The protagonist,
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But there are always outliers, and the importance of these outliers lies not in how they are different, but why they are different. In Fahrenheit 451, these outliers include Captain Beatty, Granger, Faber, and Clarisse McClellan. All of these characters are set apart by their ability to think. Captain Beatty is an interesting character because he is one of these outliers, yet he actively fights to maintain the society that puts down the people who he would otherwise be grouped with. As he is arriving at a house to burn a woman’s book stash he says “Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular Tower of Babel”, which is an interesting thing to say because as he is condemning reading and books, he is literally referencing the Bible. It would seem that the key to these outliers is that they read, but why should that make any difference. Karen Prior of The Atlantic says that reading makes us ‘more human’. She says “[reading] is a distinctive cognitive activity that contributes to our ability to empathize with others; it therefore can, in fact, makes us ‘smarter and nicer,’ among other things,” (Prior). She says that it isn’t so much the lessons intended to be taught by the books, although they …show more content…
It enables you to think for yourself and think with importance, on a philosophical level. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag transitions from being another shallow citizen to someone who knows how to think, someone who acknowledges the world around them and doesn’t live in denial. In the real world, in a society where reading is valued, we read for leisure or for a school assignment or because somebody told us to, but we still read to gain knowledge, and to expand our minds and become deeper and/or better
But there are always outliers, and the importance of these outliers lies not in how they are different, but why they are different. In Fahrenheit 451, these outliers include Captain Beatty, Granger, Faber, and Clarisse McClellan. All of these characters are set apart by their ability to think. Captain Beatty is an interesting character because he is one of these outliers, yet he actively fights to maintain the society that puts down the people who he would otherwise be grouped with. As he is arriving at a house to burn a woman’s book stash he says “Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular Tower of Babel”, which is an interesting thing to say because as he is condemning reading and books, he is literally referencing the Bible. It would seem that the key to these outliers is that they read, but why should that make any difference. Karen Prior of The Atlantic says that reading makes us ‘more human’. She says “[reading] is a distinctive cognitive activity that contributes to our ability to empathize with others; it therefore can, in fact, makes us ‘smarter and nicer,’ among other things,” (Prior). She says that it isn’t so much the lessons intended to be taught by the books, although they …show more content…
It enables you to think for yourself and think with importance, on a philosophical level. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag transitions from being another shallow citizen to someone who knows how to think, someone who acknowledges the world around them and doesn’t live in denial. In the real world, in a society where reading is valued, we read for leisure or for a school assignment or because somebody told us to, but we still read to gain knowledge, and to expand our minds and become deeper and/or better