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How Is Ethos Used In Fahrenheit 451

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(MIP) This meme shows one of the most well-known laws of the society in Fahrenheit 451, which also plays a key role in the novel. (SIP-A) The society within the novel bans and burns books, helping to create the country of mindless citizens they now have. (STEWE-1) Beatty, a fire captain who burns books for a living, explains to Montag the government’s logic behind why books are burned. He reveals that as people lives sped up books lost content as they got shorter and shorter (52). In addition to this he says “‘Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag’” (57). All controversial books were burned, and the rest chose safe, bland topics. With books …show more content…

(SIP-A) In the first image, the argument hinges on both logical fallacies and appeals (ethos, pathos, logos). (STEWE-1) Pathos, or appeal to emotion, plays a major role in persuading people to agree with this meme. Pathos uses people’s emotions to convince them to agree with a point. In this society, people are obsessed with material comforts and live comfortable lives. Therefore, the thought of a city broken down in ruins would cause them to feel unsettled because they would not want their homes to end up as dilapidated as in the image that is shown. So by implying that books caused another society to end up abandoned and in ruins, it appeals to people’s fear of ending up the same way to convince them that the government is right in saying that books should not exist because if they do terrible things will happen. (STEWE-2) The claim that books led to society falling apart is in itself a logical fallacy, the false cause fallacy, as well. The false cause fallacy is when something is said to be the cause of another event, without sufficient evidence that that is the case. The claim made by this meme may have a base in fact, because Beatty describes the previous society as country where “‘Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before’” (54). So while it is entirely possible that some cities, in the past, fell apart with no one living in them and became a mess, it was not books, or only books, that caused that. The meme uses a warped retelling of history to say that books caused all the problems before, and therefore the law against books is necessary so it does not happen again. This would be the false cause fallacy because it is describing one thing as the cause of another when that is not true. There is not sufficient

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