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We often liked to say that family is one of the world’s greatest mystery. The fusion of time and energy of two separate human beings formed together to create a unified entity in which joy and happiness mixed with pain and sadness, efforts, and will powers incarnating an enigmatic ritual. Regardless of these conflicting factors that could easily distort our minds and confuse us, we are always enthusiastic in our quest to find a suitable companion. In the dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, the idea of family is distorted, and its members were arranged and manipulated to preserve the authoritative position of the government.
The readers’ first impression of the relationship between Guy Montag, the protagonist, and Mildred Montag, his wife, is of a dull and withdrawn nature. On page 11, Guy Montag stepped into his wife’s bedroom in which he described as a “cold marbled room of a mausoleum” and that it was filled with “complete darkness”. Moreover, the face of his wife was lifeless and “snow-covered”. Mildred was not only asleep when Guy returned home, but the description of her face signified the appearance of a drug-addict. The next day, Mildred awaken and adopted an uninterested and ignorant attitude in her communication with Guy Montag.
At this point in the novel, many people might associate this type of relationship between Guy and Mildred to be an anomaly of the normal standard of relationships and is just like any other oddity of modern society. However, as evidenced by Mildred’s description of the TV parlor “families” on page 20, a relationship during the timeline of the book was synonymous with a meeting with a stranger at a coffee shop. When Guy asked Mildred about the TV show, her response was simply “There are these people named Bob and Ruth and Helen” without providing any context of their activities in the show. This implied that family, at the time, was not mysterious and magical but is simply another boring factor of life.
Another peculiarity of family in the novel is that the concept of starting a family was not a choice in the novel, but rather, it is arranged without the consent of the participants. On page 43, the author of “Fahrenheit 451” revealed through the conversation between Guy and Mildred that their family was arranged as neither party knew about the first time they ever met. In a contemplating tone, Guy asked Mildred about “The first time [they] ever met” in which Mildred was stunned in her response.
The reason for this “arranged family” in the novel is due to the nature of the dystopia. As there are still people in “Fahrenheit 451” who disagree with the practices of the government to burn books and works of intellect, the government needed a way to incorporate spies into society. As a result, the government planted agents that would be their ears in the imagined private setting of a home. An example of this is portrayed on page 114 when Guy Montag asked his wife “Mildred, you didn’t put in the alarm [that he hid books in his house]” to which she ran off into a speeding car. Mildred gave away the secret of hidden books in their home that Guy entrusted her with. This showed that the concept of family was abused by the government in the novel to quickly discover oppositions and maintain their status as the ruling class.
“Fahrenheit 451” was a dystopian novel that not only prey on human’s fear of a world where knowledge was forbidden and burnt to near extinction, but it also clawed at the baffling concept of family. We often put family on top of a pedestal, but sometime, the pedestal is too high to handle. When we rely on family, or books, to great extent, it may collapse upon us. Even more fearful, if the object on the pedestal is too high above us, we may continue to praise and extol it, even when there is dirt on its feet, or rusts in its foundation.
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