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Technology In Fahrenheit 451

Decent Essays

Technology may be the key to improving humanity, but will it distort our society as we know it? In this short novel by the late author Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, firemen are sent to burn books rather than halt fires due to the complete censorship of them. One day while coming home from his job, Guy Montag, a “fireman” meets Clarisse Mcclellan, an eccentric 16 year old girl who changes his life forever by simply talking to him at night- a time when the majority of people are staying in. Along his journey, Montag meets Faber, and old professor, and turns on his peers at the fire station, eventually escaping the city to join a group of nomadic professors. Through innovations in technology, the average person’s life has become faster paced, and less offensive, more ‘dumbed-down’ entertainment has become the standard; with all the media, people in general have stopped paying attention to what’s happening around them. As technology has advanced, life has become more sped up, losing a lot of details in translation. In the time after Montag has stolen a book, Beatty (Montag’s boss) comes to his house and gives him a lecture. A part of Beatty’s monologue is “‘Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last a ten- or twelve-line dictionary résumé’” (Bradbury 52). The way that Beatty delivers the aforementioned line is in a summarized manner, just as he describes the path of stories and texts. When shortening

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