Companies can play a repetitive tune that will easily get stuck in people’s heads. That is an example of how companies sell their products to people without them even realizing it. Then people are humming that tune in their head for the rest of the day, and then they have the urge to buy the product that people don’t even need. The media uses this method too. In the science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury explores the risk of uneducated and unaware people falling for media or advertising.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows a dystopian future where the government controls its citizens by using media. The article “Heinrich Heine on the burning of books.”, by Austin Cline, tells about Nazi, Germany and burning people and books. The Nazis burned books that disagreed with what they were doing and that could potentially lead to a problem for them. This is what the government was doing in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451. The government wanted to hide the things that would make people object to them. In this part of the book in this passage, there are two women talking to each other about their views on wars; they think wars are harmless and don’t affect anybody. In reality, they are unaware of how the world outside of where they live is in ruins and people are starving and suffering from this, “It’s always someone else’s husband dies they say.”
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“I’ve heard that, too. I’ve never known any dead man killed in a war. Killed from jumping off buildings, yes, like Gloria’s husband last week, but from wars? No”(Bradbury 91). Ray Bradbury wrote this to show how current media is not showing the full picture of both sides and sometimes they can hide information to a situation. The benefit of having opposing opinions and both sides to an argument is letting the citizens decide on their own what is right or wrong.
In this next part of the book Montag, who is trying to get answers to what is happening, goes to Faber for help seeking answers to what is going on. Faber says this to him, “...but who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlor? It grows you any shape it wishes! It becomes and is the truth”(80). This scene is an example of how some people can be unaware that they are addicted to the media or TV. Sometimes media can take control of that ignorance and make you think what the media wants you to think. People should be thinking about the current situation and decide on their own what they think. The article “Heinrich Heine on the burning of books.”, by Austin Cline, tells about Nazi, Germany and burning people and books. The Nazis burned books that disagreed with what they were doing and that could potentially lead to a problem for them. This is what the government was doing in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451. The government wanted to hide the things that would make people object to them.
In the article “Editorial:Compain against the press”, the article talks about how the media can use ignorance and uneducated people to support them. The article says while there are valid and unbiased sources there are also bad sources or “shameful press” explaining it as press that takes control of some people’s independent thinking: “The problem that some have with the professional media is a result of lack of awareness or the cultivation of ignorance.” it says, “rote learning and brainwashing have the power to shape a widespread 'unawareness' that renders people incapable of thinking clearly” (“Editorial: Campain against the press”).
Some press is taking control of people’s cluelessness of current situations or arguments and is only showing them the media’s side of the argument. This is so that people take their side of the argument without seeing the other sides. That makes it so some people can’t think for themselves, and then they don’t have their own opinion because they don’t know the whole situation. The benefits of having two sides to an argument or a topic are the ability to let people see the whole situation. Media needs to allow people to have their own opinions and think to themselves by showing all of the details of a situation in an unbiased way.
Some media is using uneducated people to fall for their opinions so that people are oblivious of the full situation when the media should be providing all of the information and both sides of an argument in an unbiased way. Throughout the passages in Fahrenheit 451, you could see how Ray Bradbury is relating to the media today and foreshadowing what could happen in the future. Not all media is biased media but people need to be conscious of their own decisions and that sometimes you might not be hearing the full story. So when people are watching the news they should be aware that it might be a biased source and that they need to make their own decisions on what they think is right or wrong.
Works Cited
- Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Simon & Shuster Paperbacks. 1951.
- Cline, Austin. “Heinrich Heine on the burning of books.” Learn Religions, Apr. 17, 2019,learnreligions.com/heinich-hiene-on-burning-books-251009
- 'Editorial: Campaign against the press.' Al-Ahram Weekly, 10 May 2016. Gale In Context: Global Issues, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A452227613/GIC?u=gree98068&sid=GIC&xid=fb64fd2a.Accessed 28 Oct. 2019.
- https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A452227613/GIC?u=gree98068&sid=GIC&xid=fb64fd2a
- https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A452227613/GIC?u=gree98068&sid=GIC&xid=fb64fd2a
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