Fahrenheit 451 does not reflect history, because it takes place in the future and is foreshadowing what Bradbury thinks may happen. In our society we are all obsessed with being equal. It is the same in the novel, only more intense than where we are now. They don’t allow books so that they cannot have a leg up on each other in a certain skill, or know something more than the other people. The people in Fahrenheit 451 all seemed brainwashed, but don’t realize it because they are used to it and it is normal to them. Guy realizes how crazy they seem after to talking to Clarisse about how the people never talk and they don’t walk around by themselves or really with anyone else (Bradbury 4). From then on he notices how true what she said was. His wife and her friends were particularly like the people Clarisse described. They talked about how much they cared about the television shows and their family on them, and how they would choose a candidate strictly based on their appearance (Bradbury 93-95). He sees how twisted and crazy that seems, but knows that to anyone else that would be normal. That is how their society behaves, odd as it seems to him and us. They care about appearances and entertainment more than anything else because they have no other references to base their thoughts and opinions on because all books and the people who read and owned the books were burned.
The books significance is that although everyone tries to make everyone else equal and the same, which is good, knowledge and skills wise we can’t. If we all know what everyone else knows, there would be no inventions, discoveries, or cures. We would talk about the same things and most likely be sick of it. We all need to be different, which I believe was the significance of the novel.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.
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