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The Hound in Fahrenheit 451

 

            Ray Bradbury believed that if information were to be restricted from individuals, that they would become assimilated to the only information a society allows or creates, eventually depriving them of their ability to be human. Mr. Bradbury depicts this concept in his book Fahrenheit 451. Even though the Hound is not present in the movie relative to the book, control is equally obtained in both mediums of this dystopia presented by Mr. Bradbury in spite of the differences between the book and movie versions of Fahrenheit 451.
             In the book, the Hound plays a crucial role in the way control is obtained in the isolated society. The Hound acts as the enforcer of the law in this society through inciting fear and implementing surveillance. If Chief Beatty wants, he just sends the Hound to survey an individual that is believed to be doing something unlawful such as possessing books which leads us into the next important piece. It is able to track its victims based on the chemical makeup of the individual. This is how the Hound is controlled. As you'll recall at the beginning of the book, Chief Beatty changed the Hound's sensory technology so that it would try to go after Montag in the fire house. This was the way Beatty tried to initially warn Montag about his illegal habits. Once the Hound has located its victim it has a needle that injects morphine or procaine into its victim to the point of overdose, killing the individual. Control through fear is not only the way the Hound obtains control but even more evidently the firemen.
             "So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean," is the quote from Clarisse given to us at the beginning of the book (Bradbury 7). It clearly expresses how many people feel about firemen, whether they are carrying out their job or not. Firemen in Fahrenheit 451 are the ones to carry out the activity of destroying the information that their society deems as unlawful.


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