Be the Expert Common Sense

Connections to Fahrenheit 451  Theme: power and the people

Government  In Fahrenheit 451 society is denied knowledge in order to keep them safe and happy.  Common Sense is about taking power from the government and giving it to the people, or telling the truth.

Power  Bradley wrote Fahrenheit 451 not long after the end of World War II. The society in the book is a Dystopia, a future that is environmentally degraded, and generally unpleasant and bad. This is what the Nazis attempted to create, though in their minds it would be a Utopia, a perfect world for the Aryan race. They started to slowly turn the Germans into fanatics who thought that they were the Perfect Race. They burned books so the people would not question the government and the government’s ideals. They killed millions only sparing those they considered to be perfect: those with blue eyes and blonde hair. In Fahrenheit 451 they burned books so that people wouldn’t think like individuals. Society had one purpose, to make everyone happy by making sure they had nothing to argue about. This relates to Common Sense because it is about rights and government. Government is made to stop society from tumbling into chaos but, how far is that power allowed to go? For example: does the government have the right to withhold the truth? These are questions that Paine strives to answer, and that Bradley makes into his thesis in Fahrenheit 451.

Power continued  Judging by the afterward it seems quite clear that Bradley didn’t like it when people tried to change books to make them more appropriate or less prejudiced. He considered this to remove everything important about the book. Bradley showed his disapproval by rejecting them all. The sad thing about this is in our own reality is that we are limiting our own knowledge. These days most kids don’t read a lot of classics in school, and I heard that Texas is considering removing all references to Thomas Jefferson in the textbooks. Our school systems are constantly changing their tests making it hard to prepare for them. In California we are bleeding tons of money out of our schools and no one knows where exactly it is going. This simply can’t be good.  A conclusion from the themes of Common Sense, and Fahrenheit 451 might be: It’s getting to be time for a change. Government exists to support society. Common Sense tells us why government needs to change, and how to do it. The way I see it, it seems that both of these are savior motifs whose saviors are missing. This is because the people are the potential saviors, they just haven’t realized it yet.

 Questions?

Names  Clarisse- the Poor Clares or the Clarisse was an order of women created by Saint Clare who after hearing a speech by Saint Francis ran away from her rich home and made her own order featuring much stricter rules entitling a lot to do with poverty and was later made the Saint of Television.  Mildred- a film actor from Intolerance, No No Nanette, The Americano and a lot of others. She got married three times, had two children one of which died three days after birth and had a brief affair with the Prince of Wales. Her first husband was Charlie Chaplin.  Granger- French physician and traveler  Asher- a guy who in in the bible sells his brother into slavery and in rabbinical literature he is bullied by his brothers but, in both brings his tribe happiness and gets married a lot. Name also means happiness.