As a fireman, Guy Montag’s job is to start fires and burn books which influence his views about the importance or reading. Without a book, Guy soon realizes he lives an empty and unhappy life so he tries to find a meaningful way to live. “Are you happy?’ asked Clarisse” (20). The quote in the novel is the most important line in the book because it questions him to think that maybe he wasn’t. At first his character is confused but later he’ll seek the answers to his problems. “Darkness.
He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was now way of going to knock on her door and asks for it back” (20). This quote show how Guy begins to realize that all along he has been living a meaning less life when he meets Clarisse McClellan, that believes there’s more to life than just burning books or watching televisions. Technology affects people in the society because they have lack of education or knowledge when they’re force to not think for themselves. Guy’s thoughts about his society changes as the novel progresses.
Mildred Montag is so absorbed in her own world of just television and entertainment that she can’t understand the meaningful ways to live. Television is a purpose for her to escape confronting reality. She’s so wrap up in her “television family” and not her real life, that it ruins her marriage with her husband. Deep inside, she is a depress person who later on tries to commit suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Overdoses happen to be common to other people in the society, as a result of their unhappiness.
“Mildred stood over his bed, curiously. He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened putting lips, the body as this as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He could remember her no other way.” “Will you turn the parlor off?” asked Guy. “That’s my family” (45). The quotes show how Mildred’s obsession over television could lead her under the influence of evilness in technology by hypnotizing them Technology has affected on Guy’s and Mildred’s lives.
Guy is strike by technology because his job gave him the only eyes to see the pleasure of burning books and not knowing the true meaning in them. While Mildred, she is influence by technology because it isolates her from her reality life and attracts her into her television family. The purpose of burning books is because they believe that reading requires emotional investment or effort and it’s too unhappy for them, which are the reasons why the people in the society had to turn to technology to diffuse their reality.
“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while.” “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, what do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they” (35)? The quotes state the reason why they burn books, just to make people happy.
