Farenheit 451 - The Impact Of Television On A Civilization

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate April 2001

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The novel Fahrenheit 451, by ray Bradbury, is a very interesting book. This book portrays a world opposite to our own. In this futuristic time, people are influenced by many different things. Let's focus on one of these factors in the book: television.

Television was one of the main reasons that society was burning books. Because of the Parlor Walls, people were not reading books any more. The TV's were so common that it was hard not to be influenced by what they showed. The Parlor Walls created a feeling that everything had to happen immediately and so this caused the world to lose interest in society. Clearly the TV's did not help society.

The television had a great impact on this world that was portrayed in Fahrenheit 451. The population would react to the shows that were played on TV. The people that controlled the televisions pretty much had control over what the city did.

Since people could control others this caused everyone to be pretty much the same with the same views. Since television was basically the only ways to spread the news, officials or other high-ranking people could control what was shown about the world. The television had too had much of a negative impact on these cities.

Television could control almost anyone that watched even a little bit of its shows. Guy Montag did not like the TV's and never watched them but, when he was being chased, he was mesmerized by the television showing him being chased. This almost got him killed by the hound. The TV got the general population into liking a lot of violence because it was constantly being shown and when it was the people were encouraged to watch it. This is another instance where TV played a bad part in the civilization.

It is pretty obvious that the TV's caused more harm than good. Since reading was considered bad and were burnt, the people almost considered the televisions to be a idol or a god to them. Modern society of our day should look at the examples like these so that something like this never happens to us.