Burning books is like destroying history. By destroying someone’s words, one is destroying a creation. What if the bible was never written? In Genesis of the bible, God’s words were creation. If we didn’t have words and language, could people be happy? What defines humans from other creatures on earth is that humans can communicate their ideas through words. By being able to communicate ideas to each other, people can begin to better themselves and develop ideology. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the purpose for burning books was to create equality. That equality is achieved because without books, there are no conflicting points of view. If there is no history, the knowledge ceases to exist. Every bit of knowledge that humans attain every day is for the purpose of better ones life. By becoming more knowledgeable, one can create an ideology that seems to be the best to live by. If everyone can obtain different ideologies, there is no definite way in which to live best. The connection between book burning and equality is without books, people cannot create ideology, and without ideology, everyone believes the same things. Books are what give people a chance to glance at different points of view on the world, as told by the author. In a place as individualistic as America, people want different points of view so they can be unique. People’s desire for equality is what holds them back. With total equality, and agreeability among everyone, no one would question authority.
In a world full of ideology, points of view are always conflicting. All of our media today has some sort of connection with ideology in that it makes its viewers subjects. By being a subject to a piece of art, one must make the choice to accept or question it. Theodor Adorno questioned this kind of subjectivity and he believed that people didn’t have control over the ideologies that they attained. He said it best when he wrote, “There is nothing left for the consumer to classify. The producers have done it for him.” (Adorno 4) By this, he means that when people accept the widely valued ideologies that are created in the mainstream, people don’t really have a choice what ideology they believe. This is a huge role people in Fahrenheit 451 play because they choose not read books in the hopes for a better world of equality. By never reading any books, one cannot look at anything subjectively. One cannot come to their own conclusion about something being right or wrong because things do not appear to have subjectivity; only truth. People become the subjects to everything around them, instead of the other way around. When people do not have a capacity to be able to question ideas, they are easily locked into one state of mind. Alexis De Tocqueville foresaw this when he wrote “Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.” (Tocqueville) This is interesting because total equality would be a lot like slavery in the way that the ones in power would be able to manipulate every aspect of our lives without us knowing or caring.
By being able to read and become educated, people have control over the ideology they choose. Throughout Louis Althusser’s studies, he defines ideology as “the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group.” (Althusser) He saw that ideologies that dealt with religion, ethics, legality, and politics, “always express class position”. (Althusser) This is important because ideologies tend to classify people into different groups, and give one a sense of fitting in and being accepted. Althusser was especially interested in this because he saw that ideology was “manufactured by who knows what power”. (Althusser) This is expressed in Fahrenheit 451 because people accepted that books were bad and useless because their authority told them so. By not being able to have an outside source for information and simply believing one powerful entity’s ideology, the individual does nothing more than serve as a subject to propel that single ideology forward. This theme can also be seen in George Orwell’s 1984 because people dared not question Big Brother, and words were streamlined and simplified in order for everyone to believe that they were happy. The truth is, Big Brother is just used as a means of getting people to all believe the same ideology, and enforce it on others by out casting them if they don’t agree.
Many Marxist writers critique capitalism because they see the culture industry as a means of controlling people with material items. Adorno looks further into this regarding our media, “movies and radio no longer need pretend to be art. The truth that they are just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the rubbish the deliberately produce. “ (Adorno) This explains that although people believe they have the choice, they actually don’t. In order for things in the media to sell to consumers, the consumer is forced into becoming subject to that media, which is a form of ideology chosen by another group. This brings up a problem because as humans we believe we have free-will, but we are really just being molded and manipulated to serve a purpose; which is to make the rich richer. This seemingly inevitable power structure of human nature is critiqued in 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 because when humans want to become equal or happy, they become less conscious. In a big way, capitalism causes people to become less conscious because money is what allows one to attain the lifestyle they desire, rather than something deeper in the human existence. This might be spirituality or wisdom, but is it one’s own beliefs that make life meaningful.
What makes ideology valuable? With ideology, people have the power to share ideas and communicate in order for self betterment. In Fahrenheit 451, people did not read books because ideologies that were inside the books caused too much inequality and unhappiness among society. What people in Fahrenheit 451 did not understand was their history, and why things are the way they are. This is a good example of why people today still argue over religion or the origin of existence, because they simply don’t know what specifically happened in the past. People in Fahrenheit 451 didn’t even know that Firemen used to put out fires because they accepted the present, and never questioned anything. The Captain mentions this when he explains the purpose of the Hound, “it doesn’t like or dislike. It just ‘functions’” (Bradbury 26) In saying this, he is actually talking about society because society functions at the will of those in power. Those in power want to horde all of the knowledge to themselves in order to stay above their subjects.
As humans, we are meant to communicate ideas in order to live according to our desires. Should we always be searching for more information in order to better ourselves and mankind, or are we getting too caught up in our ideologies for our own good? There is always the desire for pleasure and ending hardship, but this cannot come from denying our ideologies. Once we succumb to believing that everyone else’s ideas are not better, but equally as good as any other argument, only a single ideology would remain. Bradbury and Orwell saw this desire as the complete loss of individual human rights, and that too much trust in government or total power would cause people to stop questioning their purpose. Today in America, people worry that we have already become somewhat of a dystopia because people are too easily swayed by media and money. The real importance that has been shown through these works is that people need to remain conscious and skeptical of the reality they accept so willingly. If people stopped reading and went back to a more simple life where everything was simply told to them, we wouldn’t be much more than animals, waiting for our master to tell us when we can eat next.
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. 1944.
Althusser, Louis. La Pensee. 1971.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Westminster: Del Rey, 1997.
Kramnick, Isaac. Democracy in America : And Two Essays on America. Trans. Alexis De Tocqueville and Gerald E. Bevan. New York: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Orwell, George.1984. New York: Signet Classics, 1950.
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