Comparing Fahrenheit 451 and Modern American Society :: Comparison Compare Contrast Essays

Fahrenheit 451: Similarities to American Society Fahrenheit 451 is a science fiction book that still reflects to our current world. Bradbury does a nice job predicting what the world would be like in the future; the future for his time period and for ours as well. The society Bradbury describes is, in many ways, like the one we are living in now. We are always demanding more advanced machinery, and from the past, we have grown into a much more technological society. Lately, more and more people not only want more technology, they want them to be quicker. Things such as quicker computers, quicker connections to the internet, better cell phone connections, pagers, cars with more power, voice mail, palm pilots, etc. are in greater demand. People don't want to waste time anymore. We want things done quicker without as much effort. We want things to take less time to do them so we can have more time for other things. Their society is exactly like ours. Besides having advanced technological machines, they also have much larger speed limits, so people could get where they want a lot faster. Clarisse and Montag make it obvious to the reader that they live in a fast-paced world when they first meet each other. Before Clarisse runs into her house, they notice how fast drivers go that they "'don't know what grass is, or flowers because they never see them slowly,' she said. 'If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur! That's a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days'"(9). Their speed limit is so high that everything that they see seems like blurs. They never see objects; they only see colors. Our speed limit isn't as high as theirs is, but people usually go much faster than the speed limit is. Another reason their society reflects the one we live in is that the people there are becoming more and more violent towards each other. Clarisse tells Montag that she's "afraid of children my own age. They kill each other... Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid" (30).