Where Technology is Going and My Experience in Intro to Lit

There is much concern as to where our country is headed. Technology today is being accepted into every part of our lives. Sure we can see this as beneficial because it allows us to do more with less effort. However, when it begins to invade our privacy, those endless benefits begin to have an opportunity cost. That is,we begin to lose our most sacred rights like personal privacy which also effects our freedom. The video we watched in class on Tuesday shocked me as to what was available in terms of identification technology. I would have never thought a person could be identified with a retna scanner or that a micro chip could be implanted under your skin. This sounds awfully like M.T. Anderson's novel "Feed". I think the similarities between this world and that in "Feed" are becoming more alike all the time. These microchips could easily be used for other purposes like location tracking.
As I look back at the class, I realize how much I learned. I think it has opened my eyes and I realize just what I need to look out for. I've also learned the importance of reading books. I never knew that I might enjoy to read and also never thought I could sit down and read a hundred pages. I highly doubt that I will be looking at spark notes for just the plain facts when I can read the book and get the entire experience of it. Sure spark notes is good to clarify things but I clearly did not know what I was missing by not even bothering to read the book.

Fahrenheit 451 and Our Society

I really liked the book Fahrenheit 451 so much so that I added it to my favorite books on Facebook. A lot of good points are made in the book and they can all be connected to our world in one way or another. Obviously, book burning is the main one. The society of Fahrenheit 451 may seem a lot different in how things are run and how extreme the book burning is but it’s not far off actually. In fact, today book burning is a very serious problem. And although book burning in Fahrenheit 451 is the actual torching of books, it is this and more in our society. The editing and political correctness is our main form of book burning. If all the meaningful words are taken out of a book, the ones that make it mean one thing with them and another without them, you are changing that book. In essence you are ridding the book of it’s original meaning. This in its own way is ‘burning’ the book. Some authors of books have become so frustrated with this that they just recall their books, preventing the editing of them in the first place.
We can also look at political correctness in our society. By not being able to express things as they are, it can completely change their original meaning. We hear it on the news, when the president speaks, etc. You hear things like “the alleged attackers” and you say to yourself, “We know they were terrorists so why didn’t he just say that?” Personally, it drives me insane. Complicating things further by using more words makes things worse. It hides the truth from the people and pulls a mask over the public.
This is exactly what happens in Fahrenheit 451. By burning books, those ideas and the knowledge in them disappear. A limited range of thought is one that is more controllable. Fahrenheit 451’s society shows this as did other comparable societies in the books we read like “1984” and “Feed”.

Fahrenheit 451

Reading the book Fahrenheit 451 really made me think about what I was reading. After all, the book is about burning books, exactly what I am reading. So I found myself paying attention to exactly what I was reading. I found the descriptions of the burning books like on the first page where it said, “With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house”. This description to me actually sounded quite exciting. As somewhat of a pyro myself, I enjoy watching things burn, and starting fires. However, actually burning books, especially for what I see as no reason, seemed wrong to me. After all, they symbolize hope and life, and destroying such a thing is plain not right. Starting a fire for warmth, or even for pure entertainment, is fine. However, when you start to destroy books that other people have taken so long to put their thoughts into words in, things don’t work. Obviously there will be a problem. You can’t just start burning works of literature and expect there not to be a problem like revolt or rebellion. In this case of Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is the one revolting. However this is only after he meets Clarisse McClellen, a girl who is “17 and crazy”. She seems very odd, very innocent, but turns out to know more than anyone else even though she doesn’t go to school. Captain Beatty describes her as a queer, someone who just gets in the way of the good in the world. Her whole family seems to be like this. Guy Montag is amused by her personality and it’s what sparks interest in him and ‘wakes him up’.
So to sum up everything I’m saying, it’s wrong to burn books, and if you do, things are going to eventually erupt. It’s shown in this novel by Guy Montag who is influence by Clarisse. Though we may see this meeting of these two characters as coincidence, in a world like this, it is inevitable. And this is the case in the other novels we have read. In “Feed” we have Violet and Titus meet up on the moon. The same story is here. Violet and her thoughts get Titus thinking about just what kind of world he is living in. However, in the end , Violet dies, just like Clarisse does in “Fahrenheit 451”. Also in “1984”, though the outcome is not the same, we once again have two characters meeting. They are Julia and Winston. Though Winston had already had ideas of revolt, Julia expands these interests. Unfortunately for them both, they are tortured and nothing comes of the revolt. But as we can see from these relations to other novels we have read, when things like human thought and will are effected, the inevitable revolt comes to life.