Fahrenheit 451

Imagine you were lost in the middle of a forest, with no way to reach anyone or find your way out. Impossible right? Of course, that would never happen. You could always use the GPS on your smart phone, or at least call someone. You would have at least 3 different ways to reach someone on your phone alone. Email, text, calling, IM, Face Time, Skype, the list goes on and on. Fahrenheit 451 opens with Guy Montag, a fireman hired to burn books, burning a house where books were hidden. On one of Montag's jobs, he is sent to burn a house where an old woman lives, which he discovers is full of books. The woman is still in the house, and she sets the house and herself on fire instead of leaving her books. Montag thinks that there must be something truly incredible in the books, if she would die for them, and he steals one book before her house is consumed. Even once Montag has the book, he doesn't know what to do, so he goes to a man named Faber, whom he knows is hiding books. Faber and Montag come up with a plan to spread books through their community, but before they can begin, Montag's store of books is discovered and his house is burned. In order to escape, Montag kills the fire captain, Beatty, and runs to the river. He floats downstream until he meets a group of travelers who all have parts of books stored in their memories so that they can preserve them forever. In Fahrenheit 451, their technology is isolating them, but they are too distracted to realize it. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, what Ray Bradbury is saying about the nature of technology is that it can consume people and detach them from the real world.

Technology serves as an excellent distraction, but can sometimes be so distracting that people ignore the real people around them. When Montag is trying to talk to Mildred about the sleeping pills she overdosed on the previous night, she is too spellbound by her Seashell radios to even listen to him. As Montag is talking to her, Mildred has both ears plugged with her radios and is reading Montag's lips. He is trying to tell her what happened, but she won't listen. "'Last night,' he began. 'Didn't sleep well. Feel terrible,' she said... 'Last night-' he said again. She watched his lips casually. 'What about last night?'" (18) Montag tells Mildred that she took the entire bottle of sleeping pills, but she doesn't believe him and wont listen, quickly becoming mesmerized in her Seashell radios again and shutting him out.

In our society today, the use and overuse of technology, especially in children is shocking and appalling. People are constantly on their phones and computers, watching TV, and listening to iPods. "Virtually all Americans under age 60 say they have used a computer (92%), and most of them have used the Internet (75%) or sent an e-mail message (67%) at some point in their lives.1" every single student in Wellesley Middle

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