In Montag’s time the relationships are very impersonal, people do not talk to others and do not know other peoples names. This is due to the leaders thinking that this is best for the people. After meeting Clarisse he starts to open his eyes and realise what life is all about he also steals a book and reads a poem to his friends.
The main invention that Bradbury comes out with is the mechanical hound, which is an eight-legged beast with needles to kill people who get in his way. The mechanical hound can smell out paper and leads the fire-fighters to the books so they can burn them. The fire-fighters use flame touches and because the houses are fire proof only the books or any type of paper is burnt. The description of this beast is found on page 26 ‘ The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse’. Could the beast be a metaphor for the people of the time?
All the people who are involved with all the technology seem not to be fully with it. All the children are obsessed with death as well. One of the games that the fire-fighters play is with a rat, a chicken and a cat. They set the animals off in front of the Mechanical hound and see which one lives the longest. The games that the teenagers play in this time all end with death or destruction is this there subconscious telling something. They have no live everything is told to them and most things are done for them, what is the point of living when there is nothing to live for?
This is probably one of the stories in the background for Fahrenheit 451; I think Bradbury is trying to warn us about the dangers of technology.
Even the way the people speak has been made idler; if u read the words of Mildred she has made the words that we use today shorter. ‘LET me alone’ instead of leave me alone and ‘well now you’ve done it. Out front of house. Look’. The people of this age are lazy, even worse than the teenagers of today.
Near the end of the first section of the book we are told how the society of Fahrenheit 451 actually came about, we are told that as more was written stories boiled down into two lined snap endings so that people were not actually learning anything anyway. The government decided that it was best to get rid of the books so that people would get less confused. ‘The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of people going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.’ This just proves that the people of the time are not using their mind and this amount of usage has decreased over along period of time
At the end of the book Beatty tries to get Montag to kill him but Montage does not. Maybe this is Beatty’s realisation of the situation and that he has nothing to live for. The Mechanical hound attacks Montag because Montage has killed captain Beatty and has burnt down his house. Montag has to flee or be killed. He jumps into a river and floats off downstream and is washed ashore. He is greeted by a man called Granger who knows who Montag is because he has seen and followed Montag on his little television. Montag is introduced to fellow intellectuals who have all memorised a book for the people in he future to be able to call upon wisdom from. Montag then watches a random man get killed by the mechanical hound so that the police do not lose face with the public. This can also be taken as a metaphor for the death of the old Montag.
The whole story of Fahrenheit 451 is centred on the main character Montag but it has a interwoven warning about what, in the worst scenario, could happen if we let technology take over out lives, would u really like to end up like Mildred?
War of the worlds is different to Fahrenheit 451; it is based around the narrator and the reactions of the human race when Martians attack from outer space.
The Martians land in a field near Woking and most of the town’s people come to see it, this is a very basic trend in people- curiosity. The first description of the Martians as they open up there cylinder shaped space craft is superb ‘I presently saw something stirring within the shadow- greyish billowing movements, one above another, and then luminous discs like eyes. Then something resembling a little grey snake, about the thickness of a walking-stick, coiled up out of the writhing middle, and wriggled in the air towards me- then another. The vocabulary is very matter of fact and gives the reader a vivid view of the Martian. The passage has a short sentence structure and is broken down by the use of punctuation. It takes Wells over two pages to fully describe the Martians.
The people around the cylinder stand round waiting for the Martians to make the first move. One group of men decide to try to make first contact with a white flag, thinking that if they are intelligent creatures then they may understand the theory behind the white flag. They slowly edge over the sand dues they surround the cylinder then they a bright light comes from inside the cylinder and the men in the group are turned into flames. This is the first time the Heat Ray comes into the book. This is the best invention in the whole book, even though it doesn’t seem that amazing in the present day but for when it was written it is amazing. The idea of the Heat Ray probably derives from the discovery of the x-ray a few years earlier.
As we move through the book it is more obvious that the Martians do not want peace as they use their heat rays and burn the areas that surround their site of landing.
When in the site of death people seem to go through stages. The Artilleryman is a prime example of this; he is an artilleryman, which should make him tough. ‘ He drank it. Then abruptly sat down before the table, put his head on his arms, and began to sob and weep like a little boy, in a perfect passion of emotions’ The actions of both men in this paragraph are perfect examples of human behaviour in the site of danger. The artilleryman has only just realised what may happen and has cracked, it is very obvious that he is scared. The narrator on the other has accepted what might happen and has taken the artilleryman into his home; he knows that they need to keep together.
As time goes on more and more Martians come and the world seems in great danger.
In chapter 13 the now much stronger artilleryman and the narrator meet up with the curate, who is represented as the weak one of the trio. We now have three different types of people. The artilleryman who is strong and robust, the narrator who is taking it all in and is probably coming up with sum sort of plan and thirdly we have the weak one, the curate, he will give it all up if it was not for the other two. One of theses three types is what a normal person would fall into if they were faced with danger. I think this is what Wells is trying to say to us.
The whole book is very much based on the actions and the feelings of humans if they are confronted with danger.
The end of the story is probably the most well remembered end of a story from any book-the Martians are killed by simple bacteria; this may be one of the reasons why the book was so popular. It brings hope. Also the graphic scenes and the fact that it was so much before its time.
I think this book inspired most comic books and many other stories after it, which shows the magnitude of this book.
