Critical Response to Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 to make a strong impact on his/our society. His point was to reflect an image of how our society works and how it could become. The society of Fahrenheit 451 was, in my opinion, rather superficial, materialistic, "blind" and dependant on the media and technology. When people read Fahrenheit 451 they most likely think of Montag's society as a fictitious place but don't realize that our society is on it's way there.


In the book, people were very superficial. A great example for this is this quote from page 97, "...Fat too, and didn't dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped". This quote is from a conversation Mildred had with her friends, they were, supposedly, talking about politics. Their opinions only revolved around the winning president's good looks and the bad looks of his competitor. It supports my claim because it clearly shows that their society didn't care about intellect, they cared about looks.


Montag's society was materialistic without a doubt. People bought things, people owned things- that was their whole life. There was poor education and no books allowed, all this people had were hi-tech objects and lots of entertainment. "How long you figure before we get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in? Its only two thousand dollars", this quote from page 20 supports my claim because its about Mildred wanting another TV parlor even though she had three already. It proves that their society was pretty materialistic.


When i speak of Montag's society as "blind", i mean that the people thought no further than what they were told. They were so unaware of the world around them that they had no idea about the war that would later on kill them or about the conditions of other countries: "Is it because we're having so much fun that we've forgotten the world? Is it because we're so rich and the rest of the world's so poor and we just don't care if they are?" (pg. 73). Montag told this to his wife asking her why people never question the helicopters hovering above the city at all times. It states that the nation in the story was kind of separated from the world, like they created a separate happy little world for their people and the people were so comfortable there, that they forgot there was an actual world around them, they became blind to anything unrelated to their shallow lives.

In conclusion, Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 to show us how the world could become one day, he wanted to raise awareness and let everyone see how far we've come. He did this by creating a superficial, materialistic and ignorant society.