Total Control
by Jenny C.
During a time in American history when government technology was advancing quickly, the fear of Communism kept people from doing anything out of the ordinary and the strict social order of American culture drove many to insanity, Ray Bradbury wrote a futuristic story about the ultimate destruction of a society such as this. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about a fireman named Guy Montag whose job is to start fires by burning books. The government had come to the decision that books were useless and it was illegal to read or own them anymore. People who lived in this society watched television on screens that covered the entire wall and didn’t talk or think about anything that wasn’t on TV. Housewives lived their lives through the families and programs they watched on the giant screen. Montag begins to thinking for himself after he meets some odd characters and becomes an exile and the story ends in the destruction of civilization.
The numerous themes running throughout the story are closely related to some of the issues of the 1950’s. In the novel, Montag’s wife stays at home all day and watches TV. She gets together with other women and they discuss only what they’ve seen, not how they feel about it. Many housewives in the 50’s stayed at home and read women’s magazines that did not cover any real issues outside the home. This theme suggests media control of what women were expected to know and be interested in. The Book, The Feminine Mystique describes a condition of housewives in the 50’s that led them to be depressed and even insane. They wanted more out of life than to just raise their children and maintain the home. In Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s wife attempts to kill herself by taking a bottle of sleeping pills because she cannot handle the monotony of her dull life. She lived her life through the people in the show she watched on television. In both situations, it seemed as though the women led happy simple lives, void of any complications brought on by excessive knowledge. However this oppression could only last for so long in both the novel and in the 1950’s.
Bradbury’s prediction of what the future could hold for a society under a governmental stronghold is very similar to another novel called 1984 by George Orwell. Both books are set in a “negative utopia” setting in which the government has total control over its citizens and in theory, the society functions smoothly, however the mind control takes a toll and the people basically go crazy. The novels are exaggerated examples of what could come to be from a society like America in the 1950’s. In 1984 there was always a war going on. People could never remember who their country was fighting against or why they were fighting, just that there was a war happening and Big Brother was always watching to make sure that no one was out of line. Similarly, in the 1950’s the government and U.S. citizens were afraid that the Communism happening in Eastern Europe and other places in the world would spread to America. This led to a craze of speculation and arrests of people who were thought to be or accused of being Communists. Of course, American history did not lead to the destruction of civilization even though many political and science-fiction novels written during the time, such as Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 described a situation in which it could.
During a time in American history when government technology was advancing quickly, the fear of Communism kept people from doing anything out of the ordinary and the strict social order of American culture drove many to insanity, Ray Bradbury wrote a futuristic story about the ultimate destruction of a society such as this. Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about a fireman named Guy Montag whose job is to start fires by burning books. The government had come to the decision that books were useless and it was illegal to read or own them anymore. People who lived in this society watched television on screens that covered the entire wall and didn’t talk or think about anything that wasn’t on TV. Housewives lived their lives through the families and programs they watched on the giant screen. Montag begins to thinking for himself after he meets some odd characters and becomes an exile and the story ends in the destruction of civilization.
The numerous themes running throughout the story are closely related to some of the issues of the 1950’s. In the novel, Montag’s wife stays at home all day and watches TV. She gets together with other women and they discuss only what they’ve seen, not how they feel about it. Many housewives in the 50’s stayed at home and read women’s magazines that did not cover any real issues outside the home. This theme suggests media control of what women were expected to know and be interested in. The Book, The Feminine Mystique describes a condition of housewives in the 50’s that led them to be depressed and even insane. They wanted more out of life than to just raise their children and maintain the home. In Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s wife attempts to kill herself by taking a bottle of sleeping pills because she cannot handle the monotony of her dull life. She lived her life through the people in the show she watched on television. In both situations, it seemed as though the women led happy simple lives, void of any complications brought on by excessive knowledge. However this oppression could only last for so long in both the novel and in the 1950’s.
Bradbury’s prediction of what the future could hold for a society under a governmental stronghold is very similar to another novel called 1984 by George Orwell. Both books are set in a “negative utopia” setting in which the government has total control over its citizens and in theory, the society functions smoothly, however the mind control takes a toll and the people basically go crazy. The novels are exaggerated examples of what could come to be from a society like America in the 1950’s. In 1984 there was always a war going on. People could never remember who their country was fighting against or why they were fighting, just that there was a war happening and Big Brother was always watching to make sure that no one was out of line. Similarly, in the 1950’s the government and U.S. citizens were afraid that the Communism happening in Eastern Europe and other places in the world would spread to America. This led to a craze of speculation and arrests of people who were thought to be or accused of being Communists. Of course, American history did not lead to the destruction of civilization even though many political and science-fiction novels written during the time, such as Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 described a situation in which it could.
posted by Leslie Madsen-Brooks at 10/16/2006 01:21:00 PM
1 Comments:
While Farenheit 451 did an excellent job of the big brother ideals during the mid twentieth century a futuristic artifact would be the recent film V for Vendeta. There was an obssessive central government that had cerfew on the entire citys in England and patrolled the streets with radars and sound systems monitoring everyone.
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