Farenheit 451#1

What is the major theme of this novel?Why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2007?

The major theme of this novel is the ignorance of knowledge and the truth. In this book, Fahrenheit 451, the society does not allow people to gain knowledge, and what people do everyday is watching television and listening to the radio. In other words, all they do everyday is entertaining themselves and making their days as comfortable and easy as possible. If they try to understand and learn about the truth and the past, they would get caught and the firemen would burn their house and the documents that they had been reading. It is quiet terrifying. In my opinion, I think the theme ‘ignorance of knowledge and the truth’, is trying to tell us the readers that we will become one of the people of the society in this book. People today in 2007, especially the teenagers tend to enjoy themselves too much. For instance, except for the time we do our homework and study, we either watch TV or do fun things on Internet. Other times, we talk on the phone, text massage, or listen to music. Cell phones, computers, TV’s, and iPod’s are the “Must-have” products for teenagers today. We carry them everywhere; even televisions and Internets are now available on iPod’s or cell phones. It is very hard to see young girls and boys staying home to help out their parents with their works, or reading books to build up knowledge and inform themselves. A long time ago, especially in Korea, what all teenagers did was going to school or helping out their parents at home or farms. For leisure, they would play games like hide and seek or marbles. Compared to what we teenagers do today in 2007, the teenagers in the past had a very sound and reasonable entertainment for themselves. If we keep “wasting” our time like this with useless things that will never ever help us in our future, I’m positively sure that our future will be just like the society in Fahrenheit 451. We won’t be able to learn and study about the past and gain knowledge, and watch TV all day long. If we think about this situation now, some of us would say that it’s a great idea and they would surely live that way. However, if this kind of society is what we are living in right now, we will regret and mourn about how we are not able to learn and actually think deep in our hearts and minds.