Reoccurring Themes In Literature

for anyone else’s approval” (DailykarmaQuotes.com). The main character, Guy Montag, in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury proves this point because he disregards society’s rules to find his true happiness. The book is about a society where books are burned and people are not allowed to think. The society has firefighters, but instead of putting out fires, they start the fires. The main character, Guy Montag, is a firefighter that meets a unique teenage girl named Clarisse, and starts thinking about true happiness. After seeing a woman get burned to death along with her books, Guy becomes curious about books. He starts reading them and showing them to Mildred, his wife. Guy eventually gets caught and has to burn his house down with all of the books in it. He then burns the fire chief and is on the run from the government. While he is being hunted like a deer, a war is going on and a nuclear warhead destroys the whole city. A strong message that Bradbury is trying to tell us is that people cannot let technology take over their life since it is only a cover up for true happiness. Happiness is based on one’s freedom because those who live outside of society and those who choose to defy the government are truly happy, while those who allow the government to control them are not happy at all.

Dorothea Brande said, “There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.” Today’s society is mainly focused on technology, in being approved by others, and other things that without doubt lead it to destruction and failure. Most people in our society think of themselves as happy, yet it is the complete opposite. Humans these days are simply miserable and torn between work, technology and many other things that separate them from true happiness. Too much technology has consumed people’s brains and most of the times makes them lose the capability to think for themselves, communicate with others and it also leads to laziness. The lack of family relationship and communication has ruined most families and has redefined the traditions and the meaning of a family. Too much conformity has redefined what is acceptable for people to do and not do just to be accepted. Just like the society in Fahrenheit 451, today’s society is equally self-destructive.

The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.

Everyone in this world is familiar with the saying ‘Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life’. The saying means that people are usually waiting for happiness in their lives, but the truth is that in order to achieve happiness, they just have to do what they love and just by living the life as they desire. People are always on their try to achieve happiness but it can be really hard to attain just a little taste of happiness. In Aldous Huxley’s political satire Brave New World, people are dependent on science and technology from the day they are born. The society seems to be living under the misconception of a utopia where everyone is equally controlled and stability is maintained. The development in science and technology has provided the society almost everything they need with the exception of a really crucial aspect of life that is a true sense of happiness.

When we look to define happiness, many different ideas come to mind. Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary uses three definitions for happiness: good fortune, a state of well being and contentment, and a pleasurable satisfaction. In Brave New World, Aldus Huxley argues that a society can redefine happiness through the government’s manipulation of the environment and the human mind itself. The government accomplishes this by mind conditioning throughout the process of maturing, keeping a caste-based society, and obliterating problems. The government thus defines happiness as the absence of all conflict. This differs from happiness as the American society sees it: the ability to pursue and enjoy individual desires.

Happiness is a state of mind that most people typically urge themselves to achieve, to somehow magically land on, what is inexplicable is the dangerous lengths people will sometimes go through in order to make this a reality. Aldous Huxley attempts to explain the so called “steps” that are taken to assure the happiness of a “community” controlled by a totalitarian government and how this government creates a false sense of stability in order to manipulate its citizens’ minds thus creating this Brave New World. The World State lives by the motto, “Community. Identity. Stability.”, this stability being defined as a time in which there is no visible violence, there is a healthy economic stance and the people are… happy. Its aim is “universal

In Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World, happiness does not really exist. The government controls the environment and the minds of the people to make citizens happy. The World State and the World Controllers believe that happiness and truth are opposites and don’t work together, so they picked making the citizens happy instead of allowing them to know the truths. Huxley argues that we as a population distract ourselves from the truth with technology and other means of diversion and that these things will ruin us.

In todays society people walk around with fake smiles plastered on their faces when really they are dying on the inside. Society today has made a huge impact on the percent of people actually happy with their lives. Based on a poll used to determine the amount of Americans that were actually happy with their life, said that only 33 Americans were genuinely happy (“Happiness Index”). Many factors play into this decline in happiness including things like our egos, settling for things we shouldn’t, and feeling the need to worry about other peoples lives besides your own.

Often people expect the cosmos surrounding themselves to shape to their will. They want parents, siblings, friends, teachers, coworkers, and significant others to manufacture happiness around them. The weight and the blame always belongs to the people in their lives. All too recurrently society finds scapegoats. People declare that because they were given this extensive project that the teacher demolished their weekend, or because a coworker slacked off it ruined that shift and their performance at work. In the end, individual happiness is not on anyone else's shoulders. When humanity waits for others to clean up a mess, give attention, buy trinkets or otherwise create happiness and make life generally smoother, where ultimately they do not have to put in the drudgery to deliver joy on their own and they lose all control the happiness in question. As Voltaire wrote in Candide “We must cultivate our own gardens” (113 Voltaire). We are the ones responsible for our own destinies. We have to

Happiness is a state of existence that Americans have perused since the founding of this great country. It’s such an important part of American life that “The pursuit of Happiness” is even “laid out in our nation’s Declaration of Independence” (McMahon 783). Happiness is something that may come from many aspects of life: one’s children, employment, financial wellbeing, sports, hobbies, and many other things. Ruth Whippman tells us that "Americans as a whole invest more time and money and emotional energy in the explicit pursuit of happiness than any other nation on earth". Are Americans happier today than they were three centuries ago? Does modern technology, social economic status, religious freedoms, and/or the

Often in literature there are common themes that occur throughout eras and genres to link two otherwise different pieces of writing. One particular example of this occurrance can be seen in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Although these works have been written in very different time periods and use separate styles, there are two themes which link both stories and convey a very similar message. Strict societal roles and the treatment of women in patriarchal societies are prevalent ideas in both Shakespeare’s play and Atwood’s novel. These themes are approached and dealt with differently in each work, but ultimately convey the same meaning. There are some aspects of humanity that are

The British philosopher David Hume said: “ The great goal of all human endeavor is to achieve happiness.” Happiness is an ultimate goal of life and virtually everybody wants to be happy. Happiness is a psychological state of mind that the feelings of pleasure. Happiness is, after all, a state of mind. Happiness can be achieved by following measures including: psychological well-being, education system, living standards, government governance and politics, social position, and ecological environment wellness (Mankiw & Taylor, 2011, p. 8). Economic wealth is the net worth of firms, households, or nations, which are the value of all assets owned net of all liabilities owed at a period (Anderton, 2008, p. 203). It can be clearly seen that

Dictionary.com defines economics as “the science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services, or the material welfare of humankind”. With that definition and the common sense knowledge that a healthy economy equals growth of a nation, we might assume that also means happiness, but that is not usually the case. Most people have grown up thinking the ideal life will be one of excess and consumption. That attaining more in life such as financial wealth and belongings will bring the status and happiness a lot of people seek from an early age, and where do we get that idea? Is it from our parents? Our friends? Or our government?

In our modern era, people live in a constant a state of scheming and forethought. The constant planning is vital since it allows us to save time and money. People invest so much time planning and organizing their future that they forget to live in the “now.” People believe that they will achieve happiness when they buy their next vehicle, their new phone, or a new home. However, it is not until they finally possess the new and trendy items, that people realize that those items were not enough. Thus, people enter a vicious cycle where the individual needs to work in order to purchase and obtain material things believing that it provides happiness. However, this cycle never ends; whereas, it is just a false sense of happiness and instant gratification. Individuals live in a constant moving society where never has time to stop and enjoy every moment. It is not until their golden years that people begin to repent their missed chances and moments, specifically those undervalued moments where one had the option to achieve Carpe Diem (taking advantage of the day).

There is a lingering question with happiness and its place in a modern day society, to what extent is happiness a healthy goal for a society? Yes, since happiness being a goal for a society makes resources like medical attention readily available and may being attention to figurative and physical diseases that plagues our society. But, basic needs such as the ones discussed in Maslow’s hierarchy may create issues in a modern day society due to it having a different definition from person to person. Happiness is a healthy goal for a society since it can bring attention to problems like diseases and it can promote good health, but the modern day assumptions about wealth materialism influence in happiness often conflicts with what is needed to live like housing, food, and water, versus what is wanted like jewelry, expensive shoes, or even media subscriptions. Happiness is a necessity that shouldn’t be neglected in a society, but certainly has changed and been thought of for many years.