Fahrenheit 451 Comparative Essay

When examining Fahrenheit 451 as a piece of dystopian fiction, a definition for the term "dystopia" is required. Dystopia is often used as an antonym of "utopia," a perfect world often imagined existing in the future. A dystopia, therefore, is a terrible place. You may find it more helpful (and also more accurate) to conceive a dystopian literary tradition, a literary tradition that's created worlds containing reactions against certain ominous social trends and therefore imagines a disastrous future if these trends are not reversed. Most commonly cited as the model of a twentieth-century dystopian novel is Yevgeny Zamiatin's We (1924), which envisions an oppressive but stable social order accomplished only through the complete effacement of the individual. We, which may more properly be called an anti-utopian work rather than a dystopian work, is often cited as the precursor of George Orwell's 1984 (1948), a nightmarish vision of a totalitarian world of the future, similar to one portrayed in We, in which terrorist force maintains order.

We and 1984
If the failure of the proles (citizens of the lowest class; workers) reveals Orwell's despair at the British working-class political consciousness, and if Mustapha Mond reveals Huxley's cynical view of the intellectual, Guy Montag's personal victory over the government system represents American optimism. This train of thought leads back to Henry David Thoreau, whose Civil Disobedience Bradbury must hold in high esteem. Recall the remark by Juan Ramon Jimenez that serves as an epigraph to Fahrenheit 451: "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." This epigraph could have easily served as Thoreau's motto and is proof of Bradbury's interest in individual freedom. Bradbury's trust in the virtue of the individual and his belief in the inherently corrupt nature of government is a central concept of Fahrenheit