Farenhight 451

By, Ray Bradbury

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345342968/104-7139836-3952738?v=glance&n=283155

Upon pondering what to write about, i decided to begin the year on somthing I know well. Ray Bradbury's novel, Farenhight 451, came to mind first. This novel encompasses so many themes that have pressented themselves in American society throughout history, and most predominately today. What fascinated me is Bradbury's ability to read into American trends of the nineteen fifties and paint an eerily accurate portrait of today's society.

In his novel, Bradbury presents an America that has willingly abandoned the persuit of knowledge in exchange for a mindless media society. This society is ignorant and closed minded.

The premise of the book is the initial burning of all literature. The fictional society realizes that the ideals, theories, and propositions of most literature conflicts. They believe that the lack of "unity" in the ideals presented buy literature is a catylist for public difference in opinion. They believe that this differnce in opinion causes the greatest of all evils...controversy and unhappiness. Like our current American Society, this fictional world has trouble with accepting differing beliefs. Instead of realizing that all beliefs can have Truth, and exhist together in a harmonic sense, they see the differences as a means of disturbing some kind of absolute truth. Because the society cannot deal with controversy, it ends the supposed source by enforcing a national book burning. This ideal of dealing with differences has certainly presented intself today. The nation, and the world is often divided over differing opinions. The current issues of abortion, capitol punishment, and gay marriage are examples of catylists of American controversy today. Instead of realizing that there may be no absolute answer for these issues, and that all sides of the issue contain some Truth, we bicker over which is absolutly right and absolutly wrong. We often lack the willingness to accept the fact that others have belifs that differ from ours.

Apart from his initial statement, Bradbury also comments on the increasing influence of the electronic media. Bradbury's characters live in a television based society. They are constantly bombarded with television, and its obvious partner, advertising. Apart from their biological families, these people have TV walls that display a television family. This TV family interacts with the living family through mindless chatter and sly advertising. Instead of creating real relationships with real people, they form bonds to their electronics. Scarily enough, such an idea is not unplausible today. Although we do not have "TV families", Americans spend a good majority of their off time in front of the tube. Instead of doing somthing productive, we isolate and inhibit ourselves in front of the television. It has almost become the personification of a "friend". Bradbury also links this television overlaod with advertising. We too are bombarded wit advertising. We cannot escape the radio and television commercials, the billboards, the pop ups, the jingles, and the living & breathing advertisements in their Gap t-shirts.

Bradbury seems to have written a warning for the unaccepting, TV-watching, advertisement bombarded Americans. I sometimes wonder how much more our world will become like his before we realize what harm we have caused.