Fahrenheit 451 and the Future | Teen Ink

Fahrenheit 451 and the Future

September 25, 2012
By Triscuits BRONZE, Vinton, Virginia
Triscuits BRONZE, Vinton, Virginia
3 articles 0 photos 6 comments

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"She may be tragically beautiful, but I'm beautifully tragic"


In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows how the modern way of living will eventually alter life on earth completely.

In the present, everyone is always moving and do not stop to look and enjoy things. Cars are always advertised based on their speed, because that is the only thing people want; everyone always wants the fastest phone or computer, all for the sole reason of being faster than anyone else. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury portrays our hunger for speed through the way people in his futuristic society behave on the highway. “If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! He’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur? That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny?” (Bradbury, 6). Although at the moment it may seem ridiculous to get sent to jail for driving forty miles per hour, if we continue to let the desire for speed to keep driving us it may not seem all that ridiculous in the future.

We are accepting it as completely “normal” to sit in front of the television and not interact with other humans for hours on end. Television producers are always making shows out of something, and you can find a show about pretty much anything. Reality shows- which, ironically, are anything but reality- are extremely popular at the moment. In fact, it may as well one day turn into something like Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games. “It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in? It’s only two thousand dollars.” (18). Parents don’t pay attention to what their kids watch anymore; they just sit them in front of the television as if it were a babysitter, so they can get work done. Kids are beginning to think that they should just watch television when they are bored, and that isn’t the case. This is one of the reasons they say America is the fattest country, and we need to change the way our kids look at television. It should be considered a treat, rather than something they are allowed to take advantage of.

As a society, we are becoming more and more antisocial. People are always on their phones, texting or emailing friends and family. We do not really see people face to face anymore, or in real life; there is always a screen between them, and in some cases hundreds of thousands of miles. For example, teenagers spend most of their time on Facebook talking to friends, but they don’t hang out after school. You could probably even talk to your family members, who are in the same house, without ever leaving your room. “The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I’ll show you my collection one day” (20). Like Montag, a lot of people only leave the house when it is absolutely necessary; there are even websites to deliver groceries, so, if you wanted, you would not have to go out and interact with other people. Fifty or sixty years ago, people would visit neighbors and talk in the afternoons, and that’s how it ought to be instead of going online to IM.

Fahrenheit 451 is trying to show us how the way we live now will affect us in the future. If we keep depending on technology and do not question things, it will be easier for other people, like the government, to control us. Our society is slowly becoming less and less intelligent because we depend so much on technology. Children are being taught to use iPads and computers in elementary school, and they are also taught math using a calculator. If we keep being so dependent on technology, the human brain will eventually be useless to us. Our generation has to change, or we may suffer the consequences.


The author's comments:
This is an analysis essay I wrote for my english class explaining how Fahrenheit 451 may become truth in the future.

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This article has 72 comments.


Peytonborel said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 12:56 pm
I agree with this because I can feel myself becoming more and more dependent on technology. Even in school we aren't allowed to not have technology. My head is pounding by the end of school because of staring at the screen on my iPad. It's causing us to not think as hard and also causing many distractions.

KoreaJS said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 12:56 pm
I agree with everything about this article. We are using and on our electronic devices in a great amount of time. I am wondering,"What are some future plan to prevent from this, just like Fahrenheit 451?

Austin S said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 12:56 pm
The truth of this article is actually somewhat scary. When you go outside, you no longer see kids running around or playing catch, and I am the same exact way. I have no idea when our society changed to this antisocial way, but I do not like it.

Findingnemo said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 12:55 pm
The article is very enticing and although most of it will come true in the near future, I find it pointless to rely on technology. Everybody that does is harming themselves more than anything else could, yes cancer and epidemics can wipe out civilizations but in the end if the objects that we most rely on disappear or stop working then mankind will fall.

Zane said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 12:55 pm
I agree that people these days are less sociable than the past but we are no where near 451 standards. But I think it is possible that one day our society could resemble that.

on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:34 am
Personally, I think that the technology is control by government. The people are just fall in to the trap of the government to control more easily.

Alec B said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:33 am
I think that although a very large number of people act the way it is described in the article many people do not. There are plenty of people in the world, that have enough sense to put technology down, and talk with each other face to face. Though he is valid in saying that more, and more people are becoming technological, but the fact remains you can't stop everyone from socializing.

on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:32 am
I believe that technology is a way of the future. While it's important that it doesn't override us, which I will admit at times does with our generation, I think that instead of fearing this great advancement we should find a way to build on in while still remaining ourselves. I believe that you maybe think we should barely use this gift, all I'm saying is that we need to enhance this opportunity and not try to erase it.

on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:30 am
I completely agree with what you said. I think this is a big issue

Gabby Sahm said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:29 am
I agree because kids these days aren't really living. They are hiding behind profiles, and usernames on the Internet. People barly ever meet in public, and even now people are starting to talk on the phone less. Everything is about texting, and IMing. Kids need to start getting out in public and actually getting active rather than scrolling through life online.

Asia said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:29 am
I agree with article, I think that we are to dependent on technology.

ojo5157 said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:29 am
This is true because technology is getting bigger and bigger everyday and it is going to be hard to go back to the way it use to be.

on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:29 am
I think our world could actually eventually end up this way like it is in the book, but I dont think it will happen anytime soon, because our world is still very involved in litterature.

J. Fink said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
It's odd to think about moving so quickly in life that you don't stop in to take your surroundings. If our world turns into a Fahrenheit 451 type of world, kids will never understand nature, they will only know "blurs".

Conner said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I agree with the last paragraph because if we continue to depend on technology we might suffer the consequences. On the other hand though I still believe that most of society still holds on to hanging out with friends and with family, it's just the younger crowd that is slowly depending more and more on technology.

Deborahc said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I agree in that the way we live now will definitely effect us in the long run. We are becoming more dependant on technology which is making us less intelligent.

jab6324 said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I agree with this article and how people are becoming more antisocial and how we are so dependent on technology and how one day our brains will be useless.

Tate said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I agree that we will become more dependent on technology and I also think that it has already somewhat happened.

suryar said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I Think that this article is informative and tells us about our future and that if we keep using technology we won't question people and we won't get knowledge. I think we should be more independent of our technology and more dependent on our friends and family because it said that humans are becoming more anti-social.

pws0679 said...
on Sep. 11 2013 at 10:28 am
I agree with you.