What Would You Do If Your Society One Day Conquered You, How Would You React?

In the literary work Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the reader is introduced to a dystopian novel where it is based on the future and the society that outlawed books. The main character Montag learns about the conflict between his freedom from owning books and the censorship behind it. This results in him questioning society, to which he then wants answers. The theme is best described as individuals in society being uneducated and brainwashed. Society banned books to keep people from learning and gaining knowledge.

Therefore changing their own opinions on the society’s rules. Censorship had a big impact on Montag by messing with his happiness and own thoughts. Before the society changed Montag, he liked his job as a fireman burning books however, after seeing and realizing that this is all wrong he doesn’t want to be a part of it anymore and is confused by it.

Society is trying to hide something from the people. Montag just wants answers to why society is trying to hide the knowledge from citizens and why they don’t want them to know.

As Bradbury states “ So how do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless”. This means that society is trying to portray a seamless and perfect world to the citizens. Society is trying to hide the citizens from growing their knowledge so they won’t question what is going on.

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The similarities between our society and the society in the book are that we both rely on technology and media, through the censorship of individuals’ ideas and beliefs. Today people get offended so easily that the media and news have to censor things that they feel will upset people.

Whereas in the Fahrenheit society they were brainwashed into thinking and believing whatever they were told, they didn’t have their ideas or beliefs. Understanding what happened to Montag made me realize that I don’t want to take my freedom and knowledge for granted. I’m glad that I don’t live in a place where you get told what to do 24/7. It would be torture honestly. This story raises the question “ what would you do if your society went rogue on you one random day, how would you react?” I don’t know what I would do, I would be confused and angry though. By comparing their society to ours today I feel we learn that if we don’t want this to happen, we should make a change to not be reliant on technology so much these days. People get so caught up in what people say online and on the media that they don’t realize what is going on right in front of them. I believe that Fahrenheit 451 has valuable lessons to learn from and that if some things don’t change it could result in bigger changes in the world.