Fahrenheit 451 - Essay 2

Eugenia Kim

Ms. Lee

9th grade English

16 May 2017

The Evasion Phenomenon of Books Is Realizing in Our Society

“Answer the alarm quickly, start the fire swiftly, burn everything, report back to firehouse immediately, stand alert for other alarms. Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman : Benjamin Franklin” (64). This is the manual for firemen in the society of Fahrenheit 451. Books are prohibited in this society, therefore, “firemen” burn the book and a person who possessed books were arrested. The evasion phenomenon of books are no longer just a theme for a fiction. This phenomenon is actually realized in our society.

First, people in both society started to refuse books because of the advanced technology. For example, “Radio. Television. Things began to have mass. And because they had mass, they became simpler. Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere” (84). In the story, a book is less attractive than radio and television because the technology has been developed and became mass. In reality, since the electrical device has been advanced, eighty-seven percent of Americans are receiving news from television while people who receive news from the newspaper or magazine decreased to sixty-one percent (How Americans get their news). In addition, “Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought” (85)! The books were fading away from people’s attention in Fahrenheit 451 because people began to prefer faster information since fast media has been developed. Like the society in Fahrenheit 451, people prefer internet than books because current information or news are constantly updated in internet meanwhile, people had to wait for another series of books or magazines to be published for new information. These are the reasons why people began to refuse books in Fahrenheit 451 and reality.

Second, in both society, people started to make a decision not to read books. For instance, “But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive… It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no” (87)! The author described that people in this society rejected books without any government’s restrain. Our reality is getting similar to Fahrenheit 451’s society because eighty percent of American families did not buy a book in 2016 and this was their own choice (Reading Statistics). Moreover, “When he was done he looked down upon some twenty books lying at his wife’s feet… Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor… Then, moaning, she ran forward, seized a books and ran toward the kitchen incinerator” (95). According to the story, people felt repulsion to books, therefore some people burn the books by themselves even without the firemen. People in reality are not that extreme, but still people decide to spend their time with electrical devices when they have spare time which results that less group of people are reading books just for entertainment.
In conclusion, if our society became like the Fahrenheit 451’s society that prohibits all of the books, prospective results are disorders caused by extremely exposed of electromagnetic waves from electronic equipment. Also, people will pursue only fast, simple and incendiary information and refuse to do critical thinking. Those tendencies would trigger aggressive personalities of individuals and finally it might create “firemen” in order to burn all the books.