Published in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 was a commentary on the future. From the rise of totalitarianism and political paranoia to the dawn of a new age of technology, Ray Bradbury foretold a world where free thought, literature, and individuality were crushed beneath the bulwark of mindless technological dependence and political repression. Seventy years after publishing, Bradbury’s warnings look more like uncanny predictions rather than futuristic fantasy. From the titanic impact of social media to widespread ideological intolerance, multiple aspects of Fahrenheit 451 have crossed the line between fiction and become reality.
One of the central themes of Fahrenheit 451 was the willing replacement of literature as a form of thought and entertainment. This is accomplished by the dominance of two technologies: the television/parlor wall, and the “Seashell”, a 1950’s take on the AirPod. These two technologies are prevalent throughout the novel, and serve to facilitate the consumption of meaningless content that has turned the members of Bradbury’s futuristic society into empty vessels. Montag, the main character, has extensive interactions with both and they each come to represent the entrapment of the populace.
First, the television. In the book, two variants of TV are present: a television, and “Parlor Walls”, which are video screens built into the walls of houses. For the purpose of simplicity, I will call both “TV”. The TV serves as one of the primary forms of entertainment and entrapment in the world that Montag inhabits. The TV is not merely a screen where programs are watched: the TV also contains “relatives” and “family”, both of which seek to give individuals accompaniment and replace true human connection. Montag’s wife, Mildred, is obsessed with the TV, and her life consists mostly of interaction with it. ““I had a nice evening," she said, in the bathroom. "What doing?" "The parlor." "What was on?" "Programs." "What programs?" "Some of the best ever." "Who?" "Oh, you know, the bunch”” Mildred had a “nice evening”, but is unable to even describe the content that she consumed throughout the course of that evening. She knows she spent the evening watching the TV, knows she enjoyed it, and yet cannot find words to convey the experience to her husband. The TV also provides “relatives”, which serve as the 1950’s equivalent of an AI chatbot. They interact with people and provide them with a “family” that distracts them from reality and thought.
"And the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud. He had taken to calling them relatives from the very first. "How's Uncle Louis today?" "Who?" "And Aunt Maude?"
These characters provide nothing of substance or value to people, instead drawing them in with meaningless gibberish that does nothing but keep them entertained. Both aspects of the TV serve a fundamental purpose: they serve to distract, distract and distract. They provide a “family” and entertainment that say much and nothing at the same time.
The second key technology used to shackle the populace is the “Seashell”, which is a small radio plugged into the ear, very similar to modern-day earbuds. These serve to further isolate the individual and drench them with constant auditory stimulation, all to minimize the possibility of independent thought. When not using the parlor walls, Mildred frequently uses the “Seashell” to escape the real world.
"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time."
The Seashells ensure that the mind is always distracted, not with meaningful or thought provoking content, but with meaningless noise. They ensure that the user is detached from reality at all times, even when performing chores or sleeping.
In a world where literature is banned and thought discouraged, both technologies serve as the chains holding a willing populace. It doesn’t take long for their present-day heirs to come to mind. Both technologies and the entrapment in a sea of emptiness that they represent can be seen in the advent of social media. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Snapchat consume the undivided attention of billions of people across the globe. Worldwide, the average user spends more than two and a half hours a day on social media. More than half of Gen Z spends more than four hours a day on social media. We’ve all had the experience of sitting down on the couch, opening Instagram, and quickly disappearing into the depths of the algorithm, only to look up several hours later and have little recollection of anything we saw. We don’t gain anything from this experience - it’s not thought provoking and doesn’t possess any tangible benefits - yet we can’t stop scrolling. If I asked a friend what they saw in their last hour of Instagram, they would likely be unable to answer, much like Mildred when asked about her programs. We know we “enjoyed” it, yet we can’t describe or take away anything from our time online. Thus social media has become a prominent feature of our lives where we do and learn nothing.
One of the central predictions of Fahrenheit 451 was the replacement of literature by “flashy” media by an enthusiastic populace. It didn’t start with the book-burnings: rather, the population shifted its attention towards said media at the gradual expense of the written word. In the novel, Captain Beatty explains this path to Montag, who is beginning to have his initial doubts about their society.
"Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending."
This necessity for speed and summary can be seen in social media today: most people spend only a few seconds per post or video before becoming bored and swiping further. When we’re conditioned to spend merely seconds per object of entertainment, how can one devote hours upon hours to reading? This is precisely what happened in the world Bradbury created. “Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comicbooks survive.” Preoccupied with their visual entertainment, the public had no qualms about the disappearance of literature. Why read when you could watch? Why think when you could have fun? In this way Fahrenheit 451 differs from the reality of the repressive regimes of its era. Whereas in the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany the government played the key role in banning books, in Fahrenheit, the movement is organic, born of the people, by the people, for the people.
In line with Bradbury’s prediction, the skyrocketing popularity of social media has put pressure on one of the keystones of human civilization: the written word. While social media usage has skyrocketed, the amount of time people have spent reading has decreased sharply. The average American spends a mere sixteen minutes a day reading. Kindergartener's reading skills are dropping sharply, exacerbated by a pandemic that drove more and more kids in front of computers. And any parent with young children knows that one of the most foolproof ways to soothe a screaming child is the quick retrieval of a screen. Reading isn’t being actively discouraged; instead it is slowly but steadily facing societal replacement. Research shows that people over 65 read far more than those younger than them. As those generations grow older and disappear, what happens to literature in the public square? As the generations that have grown up with the internet age and continue on their current path, who will be reading? With so many more stimulating and “fun” experiences available a few keystrokes away, literature can’t compete for the attention of a younger generation with shortened attention spans and a need for instant gratification. In the context of the modern day, Bradbury’s warning seems almost uncanny. Lest we heed it, we risk as a society slipping further into the abyss of ignorance.
Bradbury’s second key warning in Fahrenheit 451 was directed at ideological intolerance. This was the accompanying cause of the abandonment of literature in the world that Bradbury created. Montag learns this from his superior, Captain Beatty, as Montag begins to question the world around him. Beatty tells him:
Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.
It wasn’t only the advent of fun and easy technology that put an end to public consumption of literature. It was the inability to handle the controversy of ideas: humorous or serious, right or wrong; that was what killed the book. In a world where everything was quick and easy and fun, the idea that someone from any of the limitless “minorities” that Beatty describes could be offended proved anathema. As “flashy and fun” programs broadcast what was viewed as socially acceptable, books, which cannot be re-written or pulled off the airwaves to account for the social values of the current moment, naturally became a target. It is easy to see how literature, already fading into obscurity in the world Bradbury described, swiftly fell victim to accusations of intolerance. Thus the spectre of “offense” sealed the fate of the book.
In his typical fashion, Bradbury’s second warning to his readers proved remarkably astute. We live in an age where the idea that words can be considered equivalent to direct physical harm has gained increasing popularity across elite universities and educational institutions. Our class-rooms, school-board meetings, and corporate boardrooms have become the front lines of a conflict defined by its divide on issues such as inclusivity and tolerance.
Consider the case of a Hamline University professor, dismissed just this past November for showing a famous work of Islamic art depicting the Prophet Muhammed to an art history class. Despite warning the class multiple times of the upcoming analysis of the painting and offering any students who wished to abstain the opportunity to leave the classroom, the professor was removed from the position at the school after Muslim students called the portrayal “Islamophobic”. In a letter to students, the president of the university declared that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.” A professor of Islamic studies who attempted to contextualize the depiction promptly had their article removed from the university newspaper. Even Bradbury would have struggled to create such a mockery of supposed religious tolerance. And this isn’t an isolated incident. Yale Law school, consistently ranked one of the best law schools in the country, has faced a flurry of tolerance controversies over the last several years. Hundreds of America’s best and brightest future lawyers are enraged to the point of threatening their fellow students because of the presence of a speaker they judge “offensive.” The list of the criminally offended goes on and on. A survey of students at Wellesley College found that a disturbing 45% of students supported the use of violence to stop certain speech. The shocking willingness to resort to force to avoid the mere feeling of discomfort was aptly predicted by Bradbury:
You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.
Though describing a different scenario, the above quote can be easily adapted for the debates of our age. A dread of the unfamiliar, the dissenting, the other, leads to the desire to reshape or quash this dissent by any means necessary. Only by uniformity and the homogenization of individual thought can “offense” be avoided. Again, this movement is utterly organic - another notch in Bradbury’s belt of predictions. The American government is not preventing right or left-wing speakers from sharing their views. Instead, a great mass of the population, fervent to avoid what they view as “intolerance”, are spurring on suppression of individual thought.
It’s no surprise that an environment of such toxicity has caused furor over books ranging from Huckleberry Finn (banned in a wide variety of academic settings) to children’s literature about Rosa Parks (removed from the curriculum by an all-white school board). And these are only the publicized victims: countless more are likely dropped from syllabuses without recognition as societal norms about what is appropriate are continuously re-evaluated. All of this seeks to avoid the supposed injustice of exposing someone to content they may disagree with in their learning.
Yet the idea that one cannot be “offended” in the process of learning ignores the fundamental tenet of learning itself. Learning is about interaction with the unknown: exciting and boring, sophisticated and crude, good and bad. If those who wish to remove the “harm” of learning triumph, they will have succeeded in permanently stunting the personal and academic growth of generations to come. Perhaps then Fahrenheit 451 shall confidently be moved from the fiction section of the bookstore (if there are any left), to the history section (just before it all goes up in flames).
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