Blog #1: Pages 1-37

summary:

Guy Montag is a firefighter in the future, although the exact year is not given. But instead of destroying fires, his job is to start fires in order to burn books and the houses in which they were hidden. The society in which he lives values conformity not individualism. They believe that thinking is much too difficult and it will only lead to corruption, so their days are filled with mindless conversations with unhappy people wearing masks of joy, and many hours spent watching TV, the actors are often referred to as “family”. Montag’s life is just as dull and basic as the rest of the extremely overpopulated earth’s inhabitants, until he meets Clarisse, his new, strange, young neighbor. She causes him to question his world and the think, they spend minutes everyday simply talking about stuff, and he begins to see the flaws in society. Even his work, which only a few days ago he was so passionate about, seems wrong. But when a woman burns herself with her books, Montag snaps.

text-to-text connection:

The modern society in Fahrenheit 451 is much like the society in The Giver, which is also set in a future America. Both books are about the perfect society, where individualism is replaced by conformity as an attempt to create peace. In Fahrenheit 451, books are taken away and color and stories are removed in The Giver, all in order to “keep peace”. Both of the main characters are male, and both meet someone important that changes the way they view their society. Jonas, the boy in The Giver, meets The Receiver, who gives him memories, which influence him to act out against his community by running away. Montag meets Clarisse, who gives him the gift of talking about thoughts, about anything.

text-to-reader connection:

Montag is the perfect example of a teenager in our modern society: both are struggling with their individuality and identity but hide behind a mask of happiness and conformity. We are both forced to conform in order to survive, we are both forced to swallow our believes. However, there are the few that are brave enough to be themselves, no matter how difficult, much like Montag. His story reminds me that I only get to live this life once, and there’s no point in living under a mask of conformity. Clarisse describes her peers as "all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else" (Bradbury 28). Her observations translates to some extent into High School, where conformity is also valued. Being different makes you a target. Clarisse also says that she is ‘afraid of children [her] own age” (Bradbury 27) because they hurt each other, much like modern bullies harm each other. Our society values technology, we believe that it can improve the quality of life. Montag’s world believes this too, their technology is much farther along than ours, but it has the same purpose: to occupy people and to keep them from being curious. The endless hours that Montag’s wife and friends spend in the parlor (or TV) can be compared to the time teens spend with computers or TVs.