Compare and Contrast Essay

Real Fiction?

Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, is a science fiction novel that unmistakably exemplifies a world where modern technology and advanced machinery play a very major role in the lives of the people living in that world, a world that could be easily considered parallel to our world, the world we live in today. The novel’s world and our world are comparable because of the technology and the gradual increase of violence. Are the worlds also similar in terms of how people struggle and squirm just to find happiness and how they would go to extreme lengths just to acquire it?

The society in the novel is, alas, very much like ours. People are always demanding more from technology. Technology that made doing things faster, much more convenient and easier. Faster cars, faster connections, faster computers and faster transmissions. We don’t want to waste our time anymore. We want faster things that require little to no work at all.

We want faster cars. The society in the novel has a larger speed limit so that people can get where they want to go faster. Clarisse had pointed out that drivers 'don't know what grass is, or flowers because they never see them slowly,' she said. 'If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur! That's a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days'"(9). This just shows that with their large speed limit, all they see is just colors and blurs. Our speed limit isn’t as high as theirs is, but people usually go much faster than what the speed limit is. Some people aren’t even submissive to traffic signals anymore.

Another thing both worlds have in similar is the fact that people are becoming more and more violence prone. Clarisse said, “I am afraid of children my own age. They kill each other... Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid."(30) This reflects the society we have here today. There are many recurring fraternity wars, teenagers killing, shooting and harassing each other, rapes, homicides and murder cases.

And all of these things were because the government had wanted freedom, happiness and equality for the people. The government had wanted to give the people ‘happiness’ because when you’re ‘happy’, you do not question anything. And they didn’t want to people to question them and their ways.

Are their ways of seeking for happiness similar to ours?

People in the novel preferred not-to-intimate and complex relationships to be removed from the ‘pain and heartbreak’ it can cause once things start going downhill. The people have equated emotions and depth of thought with unhappiness and confusion which has led to the banning of literature. In our world, we consider the companionship of our loved ones to be what we consider ‘happiness’.

Ray Bradbury’s predictions, although far-fetched and bizarre, almost hit home. The plodding growth of both technology and violence in both worlds are frightening. If Bradbury’s predictions of the world do come to life, to running over people on streets with fast cars just for the heck of it to banning of books, then it does not bode well for mankind.

Can happiness still exist then?

References:

-- http://bookstove.com/book-talk/parallels-between-fahrenheit-451-and-todays-society/

-- http://bookstove.com/science-fiction/fahrenheit-451-vs-today/

-- http://www.echeat.com/essay.php?t=25337

Narrative Essay

Good Girls always get Ice Cream

Doe-eyed, bubbly and a ball full of energy, I barreled through the kindergarten classroom door yelling, “Can I go to the playground? Mama, can I, can I, can I, can I, can I?!” My mother proceeded to give me the stink eye.

“Err… Please?”

My mother sighed long-sufferingly. I was sure she regretted giving me that extra chocolate bar earlier or I wouldn’t have been bounding around walls of the small classroom like a pinball on the loose.

I was about four or five then, and new to the Montessori. The Montessori had a small playground that consisted of two pairs of swings, one slide, two see-saws and a monkey bar. But even if it was small, I was excited, nonetheless, because my previous school didn’t have a playground.

My mom told me to “Sshh.. keep quiet, Meg…” and “Go find yourself a seat and be a good girl” because “I’m gonna buy you an ice cream cone if you do.” So I did.

I sat next to a few girls who just sat there in their seats, praying, probably. Or maybe their moms told them to keep quiet and be a good girl so they could get some ice cream afterwards, too. They had their hands clasped together on the table in front of them with their legs pressed together. So asked them, “Why are your hands like that?”

One girl turned to me and smiled, “Because I want to be a good girl. My mom said that good girls always put their hands together in front of them. Like this.”

I blinked. I wanted to be a good girl, too. So I copied what she was doing and she smiled at me. I knew I was gonna get that cone later.

A few more days passed and I found out a lot of things just by looking at the other kids around me. Some always greeted teachers whenever they meet them, so I copied what they were doing, too. They said they just wanted to be polite because being polite was good. And I wanted to be a good girl just like them. They do not yell ‘I wanna go to the playground!’ every five minutes or throw hissy fits if they do not what they want.

So I tried to act like them.

Boys would swing while standing on the plank where we are made to sit down on, I copied it because it looked like real fun. I ended up falling on my butt, though. And it hurt real bad. I realized then that not everything other people did led to the good, and following bad examples always resulted to your butt getting hurt.

I cried the whole afternoon knowing that I should not follow bad examples before my Mom came to pick me up with ice cream.