Importance Of Knowledge In Fahrenheit 451

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Knowledge can be defined as the acquaintance with facts, truths, and awareness. Inquiry is the act of questioning. In the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451, there is a prominent lack of both knowledge and inquiry. Meaning, definition of society, the essence of happiness, growth of media, and loss of entertainment all infer the absence of thinking and questioning in the book. In the world of Fahrenheit 451, books are burned because they are “confusing”, schools teach students with meaningless facts, and people are forced to drive at high speeds so they can’t see what’s around them. We can see that people stopped pondering their surroundings in the world in the story. In schools, students are crammed with useless facts, and are not taught about the reasons behind it. By extracting the “meaning”, it limited innumerable types of expressions. Books were one of them. Knowledge changed to simply “knowing” facts, without the reasons, and by manipulating the understanding of knowledge and inquiry, books were considered confusing and “atrocious”. In the end, it was the public that stopped reading books, as Beatty said. Clarisse McClellan, a girl of the age of 17, was an influence that made Montag realize his ignorance. Unlike most people in Fahrenheit 451, she inquires a lot about the surrounding atmosphere. She is seen as “antisocial” because she doesn’t mix with the “society”. It turns out that the meaning of “social” in Fahrenheit 451 is ”being the same as others”. “Antisocial”

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