Overlap of Fiction and the Reality
Humans continuously strive to fulfill themselves with the enlightenment of technology and the pleasure of fast-paced media. However, those superficial wisdom and pleasure unconsciously empty their lives. In a futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury magnifies the negative influence of technology. Living in the society where people voluntarily abandon and burn books, a protagonist, Guy Montag, recognizes his vacant life through Clarisse and confronts the society to restore the true knowledge of books. Although the novel was written in the 1950s, when media just began to develop, the society presented in the novel peculiarly resembles the society of 21st Century where media dominates our lives. From personal health to interpersonal relationship, media’s influence drags us into the loneliest, darkest pit.
Bradbury explores media’s destructions of personal …show more content…
Although there are several similarities regarding technology, our society is not yet exactly like Bradbury’s society. For instance, our society still values books and knowledge, and governments support scholars to develop technology and education. Ironically in the novel, society rebukes and proscribes intellectuals (e.g. Clarisse and the Hobos) because they evoke jealousy among the non-intellectuals, thus, leading to social discords. Our society, however, encourages educational criticism and debates. In Bradbury’s society, people refuse to think but merely accept the information given by the government. As Beatty describes, their government believes that books are “mountains to make [people] cower, to judge themselves against,” and books’ controversial messages only provoke dissensions among society. Bradbury’s purpose of exaggerating the worse aspects of technology is to alert the readers and to prevent the current society from resembling the worst scenario of becoming the dystopian
Humans continuously strive to fulfill themselves with the enlightenment of technology and the pleasure of fast-paced media. However, those superficial wisdom and pleasure unconsciously empty their lives. In a futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury magnifies the negative influence of technology. Living in the society where people voluntarily abandon and burn books, a protagonist, Guy Montag, recognizes his vacant life through Clarisse and confronts the society to restore the true knowledge of books. Although the novel was written in the 1950s, when media just began to develop, the society presented in the novel peculiarly resembles the society of 21st Century where media dominates our lives. From personal health to interpersonal relationship, media’s influence drags us into the loneliest, darkest pit.
Bradbury explores media’s destructions of personal …show more content…
Although there are several similarities regarding technology, our society is not yet exactly like Bradbury’s society. For instance, our society still values books and knowledge, and governments support scholars to develop technology and education. Ironically in the novel, society rebukes and proscribes intellectuals (e.g. Clarisse and the Hobos) because they evoke jealousy among the non-intellectuals, thus, leading to social discords. Our society, however, encourages educational criticism and debates. In Bradbury’s society, people refuse to think but merely accept the information given by the government. As Beatty describes, their government believes that books are “mountains to make [people] cower, to judge themselves against,” and books’ controversial messages only provoke dissensions among society. Bradbury’s purpose of exaggerating the worse aspects of technology is to alert the readers and to prevent the current society from resembling the worst scenario of becoming the dystopian