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Examples Of Dystopian Culture In Fahrenheit 451

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A Dystopian Culture’s Impact on Society
Imagine a perfect world. Most would imagine a society with no conflict and easy access to all necessities. However, this “perfect world” would be impossible without giving up some key factors a healthy society needs. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury captures the negative aspects associated with a seemingly perfect world through Guy Montag. Montag begins as a fireman who follows society’s rules, burning books, until he is introduced to a young girl who opens his eyes to the imperfections surrounding his everyday life. Clarisse is unlike anyone he has ever met. With help, Montag begins to push boundaries and question everything society has allowed him to grow up knowing. The characters Guy Montag and Professor …show more content…

A dystopia can be defined as an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.Montag realizes something needs to change and he goes against everything the government has told him. Montag is forced to burn his own house containing books and when his friend is threatened to go down with him Montag feels forced to commit murder against his fire captain, Beatty. While he is on the run, he realizes something about Beatty: “Beatty wanted to die” (Bradbury 116). Beatty is a character, emphasizing the need to destroy books and follow the rules set in place by the government. However, even he was not happy living this life. The actuality that even society’s most upright citizen realizes the flaws in the system gives the reader an idea of how amiss the culture of society is in the novel. Technology plays a large role in the culture and daily life in Fahrenheit 451. Advanced technology consumes the character’s minds and most have materialistic tendencies. They spend their day watching shows that they can participate with from their wall-TVs, and Montag’s wife, Mildred, is no different. Montag tries to confront his wife about her suicide attempt, but she ignores the question and starts to talk about her the wall-TVs: “It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up …show more content…

People interact with each other occasionally in the novel, but the depth in their encounters is nonexistent. Mildred has a couple of friends over and they talk about their husbands and their kids: “I plunked the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the ‘parlor’ and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid” (Bradbury 93). The ladies’ husbands were sent to fight in the war, but they do not seem to care if they live or die. Mothers do not even have a bond with their children in this dystopia. Relationships between even the closest people are shallow and insubstantial and people act as though this is okay and normal, but it is due to the lack of connection they are underlyingly unhappy. The government also uses censorship to trick people into believing everything is justified. At the end of the novel, the government is trying to catch Montag by using the Hound, which they claim has never failed. However, Montag manages to impossibly escape the Hound, but the government is unwilling to admit their defeat. They pretend to catch Montag by arresting an innocent pedestrian in order to protect their image: “They’re faking. You threw them off at the river. They can’t admit it… So they’re sniffing for a scapegoat to end things with a

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