Fahrenheit 451
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Fahrenheit 451
Part One
Changes happen in the short-term and long-term, and their effects vary gradually depending on how the change is impended in the memory. In Fahrenheit 451, technological changes are one of the events that take a long time to be realized by the people and adopted in day to day operations. Many things could happen in the short and long term such as technological changes, the civilization which often takes a long time to change and be assimilated to emerging new civilization units, literature can vary but usually take a long term and writing styles (Pendery, n.d). Other changes that can happen include the way governments rule, such as the monarch system, capitalism, communism and socialism. Ideas also can change in the short term, and different approaches are developed.
In the novel, Bradbury employs visual imagery to demonstrate Montag as a fireman. The author generates Montag’s image holding a fire hose and depicts him as conductor wielding a massive snake. Montag says, “Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense”(Bradbury, 2012). The mental images here are pure pictorial, showing the images or the fireman’s scene burning books while holding a “long snake breathing fire.” The picturesque view showing the revolution of technology and the wife purely concentrated on the television, ignoring the husband, is demonstrated (Yoon, 2015). The mental images are also more significantly feelings about loneliness created by the emerging and widely accepted technology in the world of the novel setting
The novel is strategically set, primarily to reflect the changing trend in our lives. In the past centuries, literature was deeply rooted in society and was used even to advocate for the social injustices, but in the 21st century, the trend is profoundly changing, and people are embedded into social media and television. The specific texts I am asking about the text in the novel include: How does Montag as a fireman feel by destroying books and homes he finds them? Does he think depressed when at home, and there is no connection between him and the wife despite contributing to the abandonment of the literature and concentration of the technology?
Part 2
Montag in the novel reminds me of the archetypal “the hero” because he risked his life and stole a book and read the book to the women and run away from the life he has lived and grown to save books. Montag had his life as an ordinary man until he met Clarisse, who asked him whether he was happy in the life he lived. Mildred, his wife, asks why he had to become a fireman, “You should have thought of that before becoming a fireman (Bradbury, 2012).” Montag in the novel represents the archetypal character, the hero because he decides to save the books from ranging extinction by fire at the expense of changing technology trends.
Guy Montag is the main character in Fahrenheit 451, and his journey can be aligned with the archetypal hero’s journey. The hero’s journey involves three stages; the departure act where the hero leaves the ordinary world, the initiation act where the hero ventures into unknown territory and the returning act where the hero comes out victorious. In Montag’s journey, he decides to leave the fireman job and venture into a different world, trying to save the books from the brim of extinction (Dolan, 2015). Montag meets Faber and forges a new way of bringing back the books by reprinting them. He thus faces conflict from his colleagues, who are primarily vowed to annihilate him. He faces a lot of battle trying to bring books back to the technologically advanced world. Montag meets a declaration of war as enemy jets appear in the sky, and the city is bombed. He finally triumphs over the conflict and focusses on a journey into rebuilding the old community that is knowledgeable and ready to preserve the literature. Montag and the newfound friends move to search for survivors and thus focus on rebuilding the lost civilization (Rojo Pérez, 2018). By reconstructing the lost civilization, Montag aligns with the hero’s journey as he faces many conflicts, wars and deadly trappings in the battle of bringing back the lost civilization. Montag is displayed as the archetypal hero as he triumphs over in the end to rebuild the civilization.
Part 3
In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury characterizes women as superficial individuals concerned about watching their parlor walls and thus neglecting their husbands and children. “Will you turn the parlor off?” he asked. “That’s my family” (Bradbury, 2012). When Montag, who was feeling ill in the morning after the previous encounter of burning a woman with her books, asks his wife to turn off the television and Mildred answers that the characters in the television are her family. The technology in this novel has completely replaced the human connection. The author depicts women as more feminine and having a kind of job that is harmless, less dangerous and uses less strength and men are presented as having more masculine and rough jobs that require more physical power (McClantoc, 2016;Procházková, 2018). Women are also presented as having the ability to write books and also being part of the rebellion themselves (Feneja, 2012). For example, the woman who was burned by Montag because her books are represented as being part of the uprising.
Additionally, feminism is widely presented in the whole novel, where I can witness differing roles between the men and the women. Women also seem to support the changing trends in life and contributing much to the lost connection between human beings. The author presents women as simple-minded and weak, and men have to control them. The women in the novel have no free will and have to listen to men.
Although the novel was written in 1953, Bradbury reflected much of the 21st century where feminism is on the continued rise with separated roles. The roles played by the characters of both men and women in the novel are different from men taking jobs or works that require much physical energy and women the less harmless and dangerous jobs. As the hero in the novel, Montag is a fireman following the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Men in the novel play a breadwinner role as they have to work while the women are sitting watching the walls in their houses. Men are taking dangerous tasks to feed their families such as burning books and those with papers, a very depressing task, especially when one has to remember the task they are deeply depressed (Berenstein, 2017). The community presented by the novel depicts a world that separates for men and women. Mildred, as Montag’s wife ,stays at home and acts as a helper by cleaning and making dinner and spending the whole day watching television. Women in the society of the novel are used as sex objects (Roberts 28). They do not have strength and power in society, and thus the community separates men and women in such a manner that they both have different worlds.
References
Berenstein, N. (2017). Female Ashes, Knowledge, and the Construction of Masculinity: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
Bradbury, R. (2012). Fahrenheit 451: A Novel. Simon and Schuster.
Dolan, K. (2015). Bradbury’s Guy Montag: An Ontology of Conflict and Fire.
Feneja, F. L. (2012). Promethean rebellion in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: the protagonist’s quest. Amaltea. Revista de mitocrítica, 4, 1.
McClantoc, K. (2016). Welcome to the Arena: Deconstructing the Female Character in Dystopian Literature. 2016 NCUR.
Pendery, D. Transformational Quest in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2(3), 239185.
Procházková, B. (2018). The Representation of Women in 1950s American Society in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.
Roberts, G. G. Some Social and Cultural Context for Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Critical Insights, 27-36.
Rojo Pérez, L. (2018). Comparative Analysis of the Mechanisms of Personality Suppression in Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451.
Yoon, C. O. (2015). A Study on Fahrenheit 451 As’ One Book’. Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science, 49(3), 185-208.