The Mycenaean

Haven’t you noticed how, in society, people use technology too much and rarely communicate face to face? 

Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury in 1953, shows the effects of technology and asks the question:   When technology becomes advanced how could it affect the people and their social skills and their mental health? 

Though he had wrote it in 1953, it still sends a strong message in 2021

The theory and question of how social media affects mental health and social skills had especially stuck out in 2021 through a lot of events that had happened in the book had also happened in today’s community. There is more advanced technology, and there are people glued to their phones to the point they depend on it for day to day life. Plus there has been higher suicide rates.

The book follows Guy Montag, a fireman who burns books and houses for a living. He meets Clarisse McClellan, a 17 year old who doesn’t believe in their technology ruled society. 

The book shows Montag’s inner struggle as he slowly starts to question everything and how “normal” his society is. He doesn’t know what to believe anymore. 

One scene that showed this clearly says, “‘Denham’s Dentifrice.’ Shut up, thought Montag . Consider the lilies of the field. ‘Denham’s Dentifrice.’ They toil not– ‘Denham’s–’ Consider the lilies of the field, shut up, shut up.” 

What this reveals is Montag is trying to do what society believes is the right thing while having intrusive thoughts on rebellion and doing what makes him happy.

There was a character who had helped Montag out with hiding the books, named Faber. In one scene he had stated that every successful society needs quality, information, leisure time to think about, and the right to carry out actions to change our society. 

2021 can most definitely relate to the quality portion, especially in America and European Countries, because they have a lot of high quality stores and items, and even the quality of such things as water and land is growing. 

Another point he made was information. Since our technology has grown and gotten smarter we have been able to research new stuff, and even Elon Musk made humanoid robots that he had designed to help humans do things we don’t want to do, which shouldn’t be a thing because, as the book points out, it gives us an easy way through stuff and doesn’t help us grow as a person.. 

With leisure time students have gotten a lot more breaks thanks to teacher work days, weekends, mental health breaks, and seasonal breaks.

The right to carry out actions to change society was big in 2020, as the BLM riots went on, the anti maskers trying to go against the vaccine and the new mandate to wear masks anywhere inside public places, and multiple issues on rights.

Though a lot of places in our world match the qualifications for this perfect society, is it really perfect though? Mental health has declined rapidly over the years, and about 19.86% of adults had experienced depression even before the pandemic, which is equivalent to 50 million americans.

In Guy Montag’s world, a lot of the same things are happening, same with the good stuff like the 4 qualifications listed before, and yet readers view everything that is happening as bad and corrupted. But isn’t it the same thing as what is happening in our world today? It triggers the question: how can we save this world before it becomes even worse?