Imagine walking into a room and being surrounded by televisions on all four walls. You look to the left as a train approaches and watches as it passes you from one side of the room to the other. This is the type of entertainment available to the people in Fahrenheit 451. The society in that book is more similar to our society than the time that Bradbury wrote the book.
Apparently, the most obvious similarity is the technology. Mildred, Montag’s wife, always had both ears plugged with “electronic bees” that communicated with her constantly (18). This technology is strikingly similar to our common day portable CD players. Everywhere you go, you find people that walk around with Discmans in their ears, oblivious to everything going on around them. Another similar technology is the wall TV’s (19). The way that people mindlessly sit in their parlors watching their wall TV’s, the same way people today will
Bradbury presents a very interesting foreshadowing of the future in Fahrenheit 451. I call it a foreshadowing because his portrayal of the world seems similar to ours in so many ways. It is very true that people these days would rather watch the news than actually read it and use some cheap notes than reading a book for a class. The technology is also similar. I wonder if Bradbury really thought that people would actually have portable CD players and huge TV’s. These are just some of the reasons that his book has a bigger impact on us today than ever before.
Another way that the society in Fahrenheit 451 is more similar to ours is the way that the books are cut short into a cheaper version. Beatty explains how “classics are cut to fit fifteen minute radio shows” (54). This is similar to us today because most people would rather see the news on television than actually read it. During Bradbury’s time,
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