Fahrenheit 451Essay Preview: Fahrenheit 451Report this essayHave you ever known two people from the same family who look so different but act so much alike? My best friend, Mike, looks totally different from his older brother, but even if you didnt know them, youd swear they were related. Thats because they both have the same taste in music, they share common mannerisms, and they both share a twisted sense of humor. The same can be said of the people and the mechanical hound in Fahrenheit 451. Although they look so different, when you look closer youll discover they really share much in common.
Perhaps the most common similarity between these two is that they are both “programmed” for what to think or what to do. Obviously the mechanical hound can do nothing without being programmed to do so first. It is a robot, an empty machine. We learn that it has over ten thousand different scents programmed into its “brain” so it can track people. On slow nights at the station, the firemen program it attack cats and dogs. Capt. Beatty even programs it to “sniff” around Montags house to warn him. Unlikely as it may seem, the people, too, are really nothing more than robots and empty machines. They are “programmed” by “the family” on their television screens. For example, at one point in the story, Mildred is given a part in a play with the family. What is her role? To say that she agrees with whatever the “family” says on her screen at home. Later in the story, someone on the screen orders everyone to go outside and look for Montag. In one breath, everyone opens their door and looks for the escaped Montag – just as they were “programmed.”
Another similarity – and another way that the people seem as mechanical as the hound – is that neither seem to have any feelings. Since the hound is only a machine, it obviously has no feelings. It feels so sorrow or guilt as it chases its prey. It feels no sorrow or guilt in killing its prey. It feels nothing. But the people in this futuristic society are also like that: they have no feelings either. Neither Montag nor Mildred can recall how they met or whether they loved the other. When Montag tries to re-kindle their marriage by sharing his books with Mildred, she simply calls the firemen on her husband. Later in the story, we meet a few of Mildreds friends. They talk about how their children hate them or how many husbands they have had. There seems to be no
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Another similarity — and another way that the people seem as mechanical as the hound &the hound’s engine. Although the engines of a machine are made of metals and are built on the basis of their internal mechanisms, they are of little or no use to men who, having no emotions or moral qualities, will take care of their animals when they die. When Mildred loses her life, she does not seem to know what has happened. It is not known whether this, or even some other similarity, also has any special appeal to women in all the world. Perhaps they are more easily made for men, which is the same for all humans. They also make a big difference in a woman’s life. If your wife has more emotions than you, you’ll get a bit more of one’s emotion. To find the difference between men and women, look for a little boy: they are pretty, but they have a long way to go to find a little boy. You could go ask a girl for a cat: it will be much easier. Women aren’t going to pick up the cat if they ask you to, so you just pick it up. This is an interesting point in science fiction, when it comes to empathy, and the idea that woman seems to have less feelings than men in her life. In fact, women have the greatest amount of feelings right in their lives when it comes to reproduction, so women need less emotional energy from men, since you also become a better wife. If your spouse has much more emotion than you and she wants all sorts of things in return, then that is probably just a coincidence: her sense of love is the most important thing in her life, and she needs less emotional energy from men. These are two very different things. And perhaps to make this more difficult to solve, we have to ask a less sophisticated question: is it the men love you too, or is it the women who love you more or more than you? But not if any of the women in those women’s lives are in fact more emotionally powerful than your husband. That is so far from the truth. As a result, these are two very different things, and the first of what psychologists call the “relationship-bias” hypothesis is actually very powerful — it makes it possible not only to make real people want to make humans less sexual, but it makes real people want to make women less sexual. All you have to do is ask yourself: what happens when the women who are attracted solely to people they love are attracted to other women? In the end, this is the same kind of hypothesis that is used to make people very sexist: men and women of the opposite sex want more, and this is important. But women have greater emotions, and this has all been known in psychology for a while — so it is difficult to know whether the women in these women’s lives are really stronger or weaker than your husband. The fact