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. P.24
In this quote, I think that author Ray Bradbury used a metaphor to compare the hounds to the people that live in that time. Just like the hounds, the people are living as an organism but from a readers perspective, they are close to dead because of how they are “living”. The people in this novel only believe and act on what they see on television, and they lose the ability to give personal opinions.
But as the book advances, characters such as Montag starts to gain new ideas. At the start of the novel, he believed in what society thought was right. But after getting questioned by Clarisse, he starts to rebel against the socialism that he learned from television, and starts to believe in his own independent actions. I believe that this movement towards escape from society was the most important step that Montag took in the whole novel, because it caused many people to regain the true humanity that was lost long ago.
Speaking of an animal metaphor, Guy Montag had previously alreay used one before.
ReplyDeleteThe machinery that was used to pump Mildred's blood - when she tried to commit suicide - was described as the Snake.
1. I think that in general people learn more from reading books than watching T.V. Most characters in this book do not realize this until the very end of the story.
ReplyDeleteThis comparison of machines to animals seems to be prevalent throughout the book. Do you think this might be a way of trying to get the readers (us) to fear technology by comparing them to fearsome animals?
ReplyDeleteI guess that Ray Bradbury did try to get readers to fear advanced technology, because of the time that he had lived in. The first original copy of Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1951 and during that time, the atomic bomb was bringing attention.
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