"Fahrenheit 451" Question 5

How does this novel reflect the history, behavior and social issues of the time period and setting?  What is this book's symbolic and thematic significance?  The setting of "Fahrenheit 451" is somewhere in the future, in a very unspecific town.  That makes it hard to compare it to the history when there hasn't quite been any history made about it yet.  I can put in what I hope to see in the future, however.  In "Fahrenheit 451" literature has been banned.  I, myself, love literature quite a lot.  I do not see literature ever being abandoned in this world, it is too important and significant in our society.  Imagine if the bible was banned.  Religion is a very significant and necessary part of our society.  Not everybody may agree with everyone's religion, or religion in general, but if one of religions irreplaceable pieces was to be banished so completely the world would be effected very significantly.  Another unrealistic issue I see with this futuristic society is how easily people conform and just believe.  Humans always want to fit in, it's true.  We like to have a plan and something to always be doing and contributing to, but I find it very hard to believe that everyone would submit so easily to such a corrupted society.  There had to more people than the literature professors and Guy Montag who were able to see the overall horrible and just wrong-ness that they were living.  People like to have something to stand for, but at the same time they like to have something to stand against, too.  This overall society seemed like a pretty good opportunity for that.  This book definitely symbolized what we ITALICIZE could become.  I think it would be a much more watered-down version, but still very corrupted like "Fahrenheit 451."  This book teaches us that technology is not everything.  We may think that we have control over our usage of technology, but this book is a good representation of what could happen.  These people came to a place where television easily took the place of normal human interactions.  Hopefully we can see what we could become and stop it.  Side note:  You wanna' know something ironic?  I'm blogging about how these people are so corrupted and all they do is stare at wall-size TV screens, while I've been sitting on a computer for hours now blogging, myself.  It is for educational purposes and I have procrastinated and therefore my length spent on the computer has been drastically increased, but still.  Kinda' funny.     



Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.