Fahrenheit 451: How does this novel reflect the history, behavior and social issues of the time period and setting? What is this book's symbolic and thematic significance?

Fahrenheit 451 is set in the future. Overall, it is a foreshadowing, and a menacing outlook on what might come. Our society strives to make everyone equal,  but Fahrenheit 451 describes the point where that goal to equality becomes the downfall of humanity in the form of destroying truth and books that hold truth.  In Bradbury's futuristic world, Books are burned along with the owners, or the owners are sent to asylums, firemen start fires rather than put them out, the youth of the generation are crazy, out-of-control adrenaline addicted junkies who see life only as a giant game board with real people as pieces, the adults of the world are anti-social TV watching addicts with no feelings and fake “families” that live in the TV and the walls, and atomic wars rage without anyone giving a single thought about it. Everyone in Montag’s world is living in a careless fog where entertainment has taken over and nothing else matters.

Guy Montag really realizes how corrupted his world is when he talks and overhears his wife Mildred’s friends discussing things with eachother. He finds out how anti-social the women are when he tries striking up a real conversation with them and they flinch at the thought. (Bradbury pg. 92) He hears them talking of how terrible children are and hears their carelessness, he hears how they base their presidential votes on looks, he hears about their ignorance of the war and their carelessness for their fighting husbands and their ignorance to anything about books (Bradbury 89-94). He says to Faber, “Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God how they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!” (Bradbury pg. 94) It is clear that the society they live in is very scarred. The people of Montag's world are only concerned in begin entertained, and purposfully ignore problems and conflicts outside their own little towns.

Even Clarisse talks to him of the social issues of the time they live in.  She says things like,  “Social to me means talking to you about things like this. Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don’t think it’s social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?” (Bradbury pg. 27) She describes how people don’t TALK about anything. They don’t communicate to each other. Even her family is considered suspicious because they spend time talking to each other. It is a world where comunication is rare, and even Montag, when he first meets Clarisse is very wary of her because she tries to have a conversation with him. (Bradbury pg. 4)

This book’s world and society symbolize a future without books and a world full of ignorance, and you can see by how the characters act and what they do that this symbolic world is not one we want to be a part of. This book’s thematic significance shows what the absence of truth would look like. No one in the book’s society knows truth from lie, and they all believe they are happy when they really are not. No one searches for truth.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.