Psychological conformity and intellectual suppression in Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury\'s novel Fahrenheit 451 is disturbing, poignant, and alarmingly akin to real life. The protagonist, Montag, works for the establishment as a firefighter but knows that the regime is wrong to burn books. Throughout the book, he seeks the truth but is stymied every step of the way, even by those close to him like his wife and colleagues. The only person he can remotely count on as a friend is Faber, showing how deeply entrenched the social norms have become in this dystopian society. People who think critically and creatively are mistrusted, shunned, and scorned. They can even be killed. The disappearance early in the book of the teenager Clarisse is a dark foreshadowing of the ultimate death of sanity in humanity. One of the things that makes Fahrenheit 451 so difficult to read is how closely it mirrors modern society in America. As the book suggests, history does tend to repeat itself, and people do have a difficult time learning from the past. Bradbury wrote the book more than 50 years ago, but some of the same issues continue to plague America, especially the dumbing down of America by the disparagement of knowledge, symbolized in Fahrenheit 451 as books.

Moreover, the book uses television as a potent symbol of dumbing down. The sound bytes we see on television reduce our attention span, as do the short articles we read on the Internet, blog posts that use lists to shorten critical information, or even shorter bits like Tweets. In Fahrenheit 451, the characters do not have the Internet, but the \"walls\" of television serve the same function. People like Mildred have no brains, they cannot think for themselves, and they are frightened whenever someone like Montag questions reality or challenges authority. I do believe that people in our society today tend to support conformity in general. However, I also believe that there are an increasingly large number of people who promote free thinking and critical thinking, the likes of which Montag represents. I believe that religious people are the most prone to supporting conformity. Their beliefs are shaped by senseless ideas and outmoded traditions, principles, and values. Religious people blindly believe what their people want them to believe. Sometimes, religious people can be rigid in their thinking like people who support Trump and who are conservative and racist in their values. Interestingly, in Fahrenheit 451, the author shows that religion itself is not even to blame. The society has become a-religious, evident in the way that all books including the Bible are banned. The Bible is just another book. In this way Bradbury adds complexity to the novel. There are some books that are no longer relevant, just as there are whole ideas and values that are no longer relevant. Burning books because they are no longer relevant is not a sensible way of dealing with the problems those books represented, such as the problem of religious thinking. When people are rigid in their worldviews and inflexible in their beliefs, they become religious whether or not they believe in the God or the Bible.

I believe that there are many people in our society today that support creative and critical thinking, because they recognize that thinking in the ways that Mildred and the others do in Fahrenheit 451 is inherently dangerous and dramatically injurious to the individual and to the society. Mildred exhibits this in the book by her drug use. She numbs herself with sleeping pills. Therefore, she is not only dumb but also numb. People in modern society do this, not just with drugs but also with television, the Internet, and with conservative talk radio. The people who are willing to think outside the box are not as criticized or silenced as they might have been when Bradbury wrote his book, but these kinds of persecutions can still happen. It is less likely for persecutions to happen in our society than in societies with authoritarian regimes, but it still possible and may become more possible with an idiot in the White House who is supported by other mindless people like the book burners depicted in Fahrenheit 451.

Bradbury\'s book Fahrenheit 451 sends many messages about knowledge, freedom of thought and expression, education, happiness, and equality. Regarding knowledge, books symbolize knowledge but it is also shown that knowledge comes from the individual human being and his or her ability to think critically and creatively. Even without access to books, for example, Montag becomes knowledgeable. Likewise, education is a process of thinking critically about issues, and has much less to do with the what someone is actually learning. A person can be \"educated\" about the wrong things, which is what happens to conservative, anti-education people who believe that the earth is 6000 years old or that climate change is a hoax. In Fahrenheit 451, the public has been brainwashed, which is a process of education that is unfortunately mistaken for real learning, which happens through self-discovery and critical inquiry.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to locate happiness in Fahrenheit 451, but the author does leave readers with a glimmer of hope. The author is clear to point out that knowledge and intelligence alone cannot bring happiness, as is the case with Faber\'s example. None of the stupid people are happy, even though they can pretend to be while they are numbing themselves with the parlor walls. The closest thing that Montag comes to happiness is when he meets Clarisse in the beginning, as she stirs in him the possibility for a new paradigm, and at the very end, when Granger talks about the fact that the bomb might actually be a good thing because it might help the society start from scratch and avoid the problems of the previous one. Therefore, the closest thing to happiness in the book is hope. Equality is a more nebulous issue in Fahrenheit 451. The society is more egalitarian in some ways than ours is today, but Bradbury shows that just like happiness, equality does not naturally ensue from knowledge. Human beings have to work hard to create societies that are truly just and equal. Equality does not mean treating all dumb people the same, as in the case with this dystopian reality, but it does mean helping the numb and dumb masses like Mildred to see the light.

The section headings in Bradbury\'s book seem odd but on closer inspection, they are simply related to fire. The \"Hearth and Salamander\" is straightforward, as the hearth is a physical container of fire in the home, whereas the salamander is a symbol of fire because of its flickering colors. Clarisse can be the salamander, and Mildred and his house the hearth. The second section of the book is \"Sieve and Sand,\" more opaque in terms of what it refers to, except for the fact that sand easily passes through a sieve. It is possible that Bradbury refers to the way knowledge can pass through a dumb person\'s brain like a sieve. Finally, the last section is solely about fire: \"Burning Bright.\"