Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 Final Essay: Social Criticism

What is wrong in our society today? What do people think our society will become like? In Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, the main character, Guy Montag, lives in a futuristic society that is ruled by the TV and electronics. Books and all of the written word is banned from this society. Plus, the children in school are being taught that there is only one answer to a problem, as well as everyone else in the city. Even though Bradbury’s society is taking place in the future, he is really criticizing the television and what children are being taught in today’s world.

Bradbury criticizes the television through the character Mildred. Bradbury accomplishes this through the passage where Mildred is watching T.V. with her friends. Montag turns the parlor walls off, then starts to talk to them about when they think the war will start and asks to read them a poem from a book. They say no because they do not think there is anything to gain from reading books and they can learn everything that they need to know from the parlor walls. Bradbury sees this as bad because the women have created a T.V. club instead of a book club and will not even think about reading books because they think that the television is the big social to-do and only want to talk about that. It is this that causes some of the social criticism in Fahrenheit 451.

Bradbury also criticizes the fact that people are only given one right answer to every decision and question through Captain Beatty. A passage that deals with this is when Beatty and Montag are at Montag’s house and Beatty says “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one.” What Bradbury is trying to say in this passage is that America is creating all of the new games that children are

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