Technological Commentary in “Fahrenheit 451”

I sometimes find it particularly difficult to get out of a chain of thought once I’m deeply entrenched in it. After reading The Handmaid’s Tale, all I could think about was my favorite novel of all time, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Fortunately, that novel meshes beautifully with our recent discussions in class, particularly because it also has been adapted to film, much to my chagrin. It follows many of the patterns of the standard dystopian novel, classified as speculative fiction just like The Handmaid’s Tale, and shows a future which is eerily similar to our own present.
When Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953, Joseph McCarthy at the height of his political ravings and the anti-communism movement was sweeping through the country like lightning. With many of the films and novels of this era forming a subtle protest against censorship and literary freedom, it is logical that Fahrenheit 451 would also follow this trend, given its content. However, Ray Bradbury has said that this is actually a misreading of his intended message, although he is not displeased with readers taking away anti-censorship notes as well. His intended purpose was to speak against another recent emergence of the early 1950s: the household television. Bradbury was an avid reader and spent most of his free time in various libraries, even writing the whole of Fahrenheit 451 on a typewriter in a library basement. He felt that the television, with its condensation of information and stories to short hour-long segments and rapid-fire commercials, was removing the public interest in reading literature. People were becoming so used to short bits of disconnected information that they were no longer interested in complicated narratives or back stories.
In the novel, Mildred, Montag’s wife, spends most of her day inside their “parlor,” a room where three of the four walls are replaced by giant television screens. Mildred interacts with the screens, whose characters she calls her “family,” through a series of short plays where she is able to insert herself into a part. Montag comments that the plays have no plot and no meaning, but Mildred insists that there is, even though the play is nothing more than a series of open-ended questions. Throughout the book, Mildred is also shown as having a close relationship with technology which at first glance might seem symbiotic, but in the end turns out to be closer to parasitism. Montag comes home each night to find her in bed with her eyes open, “in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talking coming in” (Bradbury, 13). She has completely isolated herself from the outside world with her technology, even begging him to spend a month’s salary to install a fourth television wall in their parlor so that she can be completely surrounded by her invented family. Interestingly, Bradbury seems to have anticipated the invention of the Walkman, and later the iPod, and the social isolation which this can cause. Marwa spoke of this phenomenon in one of her earlier blog posts, and that she used to have conversations with travel companions who were strangers, but with the iPod we can isolate ourselves and put up a virtual wall to outsiders. I know people who can no longer concentrate on work or even sleep without listening to music, because it has become so ingrained in our lives. We don’t even buy whole albums anymore for the most part, since individual songs are available for download, be it legal or illegal. This goes back to Bradbury thinking that technology like the television (and in this case mp3 players) has shortened our attention spans and abbreviated the information we take in.
I find it worth mentioning that the two female characters in Fahrenheit 451 represent opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to technology. Clarisse, Montag’s short-lived neighbor, attempts to completely free herself from technology. Their home is not standardized like the others and still retains its front porch, which is seen as a dangerous area of socializing and free thought. She mentions that she doesn’t identify with the other children her age, because all they like to do is use various technologies for mindless destructive purposes. Mildred represents the opposite of Clarisse: she is entirely embedded in the technology of their world. If she were not given access to technology, it is likely that she would be unable to function in her environment. Her social life, private life, and even her very life itself, lie entirely in the hands of technology. Bradbury then seems to be making a key point in the death of Clarisse early in the novel. She, the rejecter of technology, is ultimately killed by it when she is run over by a car full of apathetic youths, a frequent type of accident in their world. It has no longer become possible to live without technology, and those who reject it are doomed to be swallowed up by it. Montag, who becomes disillusioned with role in society as the destroyer of free thought, must flee for his life from yet another destructive technology, the Mechanical Hound.
Bradbury creates quite a striking social commentary about the dangers of technology in Fahrenheit 451, even though at first glance it appears to be nothing more than another anti-censorship product of the McCarthy era. The women of the novel represent the extremes: Mildred, the almost cyborgian product of an excess of technology, and Clarisse, the pure youthful girl who rejects technology in favor of radical free thought. The two are incapable of meeting, which is particularly resonant in the film as they are both played by the same actress (Julie Christie, whose roles make up the one aspect of the film which I enjoyed). Montag, the main male character, is allowed this duality, albeit mentally and not legally, and even Captain Beatty, the chief fireman in charge of book burning, has read many of the books which he later destroyed and retained the knowledge. Technology has created a world where people can no longer function without it, and I wonder if we are not close on its heels today, 56 years after the original publication of Fahrenheit 451.

Bibliography

Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid’s Tale. New York: Random House, 1998.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451: 50th Anniversary Edition. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.