Publication How Societies Suppress Individuality

In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses the archetypal “mask” to suggest how societies choke out individuality to gain unquestioned perfection. Through this archetype, Bradbury depicts the confusion of humanity, and the mask society forces upon people with Montag’s thirst for knowledge and his role in his community. Montag’s occupation in his society was a fireman, where he sets fire to books to cleanse the world of contradictions and disagreements. He never questioned the content the books held, he just followed the orders given to him.

He took great pride and pleasure in this perfect routine job. Until he meets Clarisse, he spends his time “thinking little at all about nothing in particular.” He was no one other than the mask of the fireman with a “pleasure to burn books.”

Clarisse introduces him to curiosity and Montag begins to question his job and what knowledge the books could contain about life. Even with this curiosity, he continues to wear a mask of indifferencetowards the burning because he is unaware of how to handle this uncontrollable wildfire of questioning concerning the knowledge of the human soul.

Fahrenheit 451’s society thrives on people’s ignorance of knowledge. If you do not pursue the meaning of the human soul, then there are no discrepancies for perfection. When Montag begins to question the meanings and roles of society, he does not understand how to fit back behind the mask of the fireman because he wishes to know real depth and connection without a barrier between people.

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Much like how in the play, “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare, when Prospero speaks to his daughter, he sheds his magical robe so that he cannot hide behind it.

He rids himself of the mask of power to connect with his daughter. Similarly, Montag craves connection and knowledge but his society only wants perfection and believes that the only way to meet that goal is by a lack of individuality. For instance, the firemen are achieving perfection by cleansing the world of books and after Montag has met Clarisse he notices how all the firemen were “mirror-images of himself.” Since the society was desperate to reach perfection they made sure everyone wore the same mask, so that there were no questions and no differences. At the end of the novel, these masks, and the ignorance of the world leads to their own destruction since they never acknowledged the war going on during their ideal routine lives.

Only those who shed their mask and searched for the knowledge figured out how to survive because they understood the knowledge of the human soul and the treasure of individuality. An example of this is the movie, Castaway. Chuck Noland wore the mask of the FedEx employee, and once he shed the mask and began to embrace his inner humanity, he was able to connect with the people around him and truly cherish his individuality and time spent with the people around him. In Fahrenheit 451, the society believes to make perfection, there is a necessity for an absence of individuality and making the people ignorant of knowledge. Bradbury shows that you must shed your mask to gain connection and the knowledge of the human soul.