‘Fahrenheit 451’ Revisited: State Apparatuses as Imperatives to Subjugation of the Unconscious Individual
The alienated individual in the novel sets forth his sights to being curious with real companionship, authentic relationships, and intellectual aspirations. The estrangement that foregoes the alienated individual offers his body and soul to commit and serve the state: Guy Montag is a firefighter — whose occupation originally dedicated to save lives — and is here to burn your books because books are banned for a long time. But Montag’s interest is piqued as Clarisse, his young friend whom he had met on a night walk, suddenly turns up dead and was apparently killed due to unknown reasons (61). This tragedy led him to recover the books he had secretly hidden in his vent.
451 has an easy message to decode: books are instruments of knowledge, to which acquiring information from these books is forbidden to deprive people of critical thinking. Bradbury reimagined American society under an authoritarian state that ordered firefighters to start fires instead of ending them — symptomatic to America’s standing in global imperialism: a speculation that is not quite far from reality.
Challenging the State
Montag’s clandestine possession of books has led him to gain consciousness of the state apparatuses perpetuated by the authority. Captain Beatty, his employer, does not believe in the educative power information holds. He speaks to the woman who owned a secret library before ordering Montag to burn her entire house:
“You know the law,” said Beatty. “Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!” (51)
American society is simply that: it is run by both repressive and ideological state apparatuses, as cultural and social relations form under the surveillance of predominantly existing systems. French philosopher Althusser explains that ideological state apparatuses function predominantly as ideology first, before exhibiting punishment and violence (97). The discipline that comes with burning books, like Montag and Beatty, is established by force, while Mildred’s continuous pursuit of television and radio earplugs is established by consciousness.
When Guy Montag tells her wife Mildred of the house they have burned earlier, Mildred was keen on standing against the owner he had found to be provoking. This proved that Mildred’s position as a firefighter’s wife was a privilege, and an indicator of where her priorities lie: upholding their status quo.
“She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should’ve thought of that. I hate her. She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.”
“You weren’t there, you didn’t see,” he said.
“There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” (66)
Her statement “She shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should’ve thought of that,” is not much less of an irony. This was later a contradiction to Guy Montag’s discovery of what books are used for: thinking. Reading books is exactly why they are thinking about keeping books. The emphasis of “she should’ve thought of that” lies within an efface we’ve seen before: the external threat comes from the state, the anxiety of hiding books in a home to which the worth of those belongings comes with sacrifice as its ultimate price. Her husband, adamant to his wife’s sentiments, develops a curiosity towards books, no matter how it threatens him.
Montag challenges the state by acting upon his regained consciousness. One of the pivotal moments of the novel is his unity with the Book People (as Jonathan R. Reller calls it, because of the fact that it prevails to be nameless), eventually abandoning his old job as a fireman to preserve books by memorizing them word-for-word. Challenging the state would also mean affixing oneself to the collective of other individuals that parallel their ideals, by responding or evading state ideology, to which the novel proves Montag to do so.
Military-Industrial Complex
We view American history from hindsight: long-term effects of war as cultural epochs have massive impacts to American society. The constant pursuit of the country to global superpower through wars has granted unfathomable power to influence the rest of the world, as the perpetuated myth of “American exceptionalism” is hereby explored (cite). Popularity of accessible technology, given from the drastic result of wars instigated by the United States, is haughtily parallel to the culture speculated in 451. The women attending Mildred’s dinner mention the ‘wars’:
“Oh, they come and go, come and go,” said Mrs. Phelps. “In again out again Finnegan, the Army called Pete yesterday. He’ll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours they said, and everyone home. That’s what the Army said. Quick war. Pete was called yesterday and they said he’d be back next week. Quick. . . .” (109)
The role of war is pivotal yet faint in this novel, that is, a recurring event mentioned many times in the book, but imprecisely determined. The above line proved the continuous war in the setting of the novel and a proof of the military-industrial complex or MIC that runs deep in American culture. Highly militarized nations are attributed to the economic superpowers of such countries, as technological innovations are created to serve the military’s interests (Perlo-Freeman 261). Military influence in a country like 451’s America is a functional background that is distinct to the plot of the novel. It is unspecified to what these wars originate from, and what makes it continuous and unending. When asked about the origins of the firefighter, Captain Beatty states that it started during the Civil War (68).
The existence of the Mechanical Hound and the formation of Firefighters across the nation are part of the front that establishes the constant military presence. Our main protagonist is driven to exclude himself from this troupe, upon grasping sudden consciousness that makes him indifferent from the apparatuses that led him to this situation.
The Mechanical Hound is a weaponized machine made of aluminum that acts like a dog, to which its only function only follows what the ‘owner’ decide on for it. Captain Beatty speaks of it:
“Come off it. It doesn’t like or dislike. It just ‘functions.’ It’s like a lesson in ballistics. It has a trajectory we decide on for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It’s only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity.” (39)
The mention of the word ‘ballistics’ is attuned to the warfare under the political state of 451’s America. It is also parallel to the ‘function’ of the military: it just ‘functions’. The statement “It doesn’t like or dislike” is attuned to the military enlistment of American civilians: autonomous thinking under military service is suppressed. Military leaders engage in warfare in order to win the war, not to defend the party. This is attuned to the critical comments of U.S. former president G.W. Bush stated in his keynote speech that the role of the military was to “deter wars — and win wars when deterrence fails,” and to not be “permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties, (Bush, 1999; quoted in Wilson 320)”.
As Captain Beatty, who subscribe to the homogenous thinking of the militarized industry, declares to Montag:
“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.” (74)
Mentioned several times is the hovering of bomb jets overhead, to which Montag was a prior target, and undeniable is their abundance in the novel.
“The jet bombers going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them, one and one and one and another and another and another, did all the screaming for him.” (25)
It would even describe that Montag would long for skies that would no longer have bomb jets mid-air, and cease to “disintegrate, leave no stone on another, perish. Die,” (174; emphasis in original). By description, “leaving no stone on another” would indicate that bomb jets use no ordinary bomb — they use nuclear. The constant threat of nuclear war is present all throughout the novel. Nuclear threats often occur on an international scale — a global conflict ceaseless throughout history — which would only mean that “the war” occurring extends beyond the nation. This further proves the significance of war and military that unarguably shaped 451. Later on, Montag exclaims:
“Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t, that’s sure! Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” (86)
Fetishism of Commodity and the Spectacle
As mentioned earlier, televisual media are inventions created to be weapons for the state apparatuses. As mass production grew, television and advertising became the popular norm, where markets rely heavily on visual entertainments in order to sell and gain profits. Visual culture, the Spectacle, sprang as a long-term effect of a commodity-driven society, whose individuals and consumers grew alienated by their own production. As Guy Debord states, “Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation” (9), where reality is mediated through a series of images and layers of visual glory (representation) that cause disconnect from actual, physical reality (everything that was directly lived).
Secluded in a room with three walls of televised screens, Mildred, our protagonist’s wife, asserts that she should not turn the parlor off for her sick husband. “That’s my family,” she declares (63). His wife, entranced by the parlor walls, is estranged by the books she read with him, kept in secret by her husband. Long have the novel associated itself with American society’s obsession with spectacle. The simulation of the projected “family” in replacement of authentic relationships, the novel reveals the fetishism of commodities: the imitation of commodities does not transcend the emulated experience, therefore, leaving the individual dissatisfied and alienated — in an infinite pursuit of authentic experience.
This is highly significant to the political turmoil of American society’s long-standing problem of censorship and consumerism. 451 confronts the uncomfortable subject of commodified intangible goods. Experiences in parlor walls that are treated as “family” have granted the consumer to mythicize illusion from reality. The televised screens are able to imitate life in pictures, with personalities of visual presence becoming your known companions. As it is eerily stated in the novel, “The parlor “aunts” began to laugh at the parlor “uncles,” (72).”
What is frequently thematized in this novel is the usage of parlor walls and seashell radios in contrast to the forbidden books that were the focal point of the story. The conditions of the societal relations are virtual and disconnected; the facets of human relationship are valued towards material possessions. Therefore, authenticity of experiences that are originally human are ascribed towards consumed goods and products. Faber, a newfound friend of Montag, explains to him the cause of perished books and the rise of television:
“The televisor is ‘real.’ It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, ‘What nonsense!’” (98)
Relevant to the constituted ideological state apparatuses that the system perpetuates, the televisor is seen to be ‘real’ in terms of dimensions. It dictates its viewers of state ideology through entertainment as it slowly seeps through their consciousness. The continuous usage of media consumption were considered to be threats to illusionize reality: by shifting perceptions the system will produce “passive, surveilled subjects, entertained by programs that embed state ideology” (Hurtgen 37).
This machinery proved to be effective as the collective public in 451. The system rapidly changed under the favor of the state. Faber briefly explains to Montag:
“…Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.” (100)
It is symptomatic to the objective of state ideology: state creates televisual media in order to produce passive, obedient, consciously-subjugated individuals deprived of critical thinking, and when time comes the eventual choice of defying knowledge acquisition is laid in the hands of the ‘free-willed’ collective, where a homogeneous decision from society mysteriously arrived unanimously.
Conclusion
The novel deliberately gives itself as a product of American society: in a highly-militarized system, civilians are the ones who are most impacted. Ultra-capitalist and fascist states will continue to subdue individuals to submit under a “false consciousness” that hinders and discourages collectivism. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 continues to be a novel impossible to disprove. Military, media, and the state are imperative to dispossessing the consumer of his free will, therefore unable to entertain any kind of luck in asserting individuality under a system that suppresses individuality. It may be a simple allegory to the importance of reading, but it correlates the function of knowledge in a capitalist, fascist society.
It remains as an important piece in the American speculative fiction genre because it symbolizes a long-continuous struggle of both new and old generations in accumulating liberating education that free them from the infinite pursuit of state-induced ideology.
WORK/S CITED
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 2001.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451: A Novel. Simon and Schuster, 2012.
Debord, G. (1983). Society of the spectacle. (K. Knabb, Trans.). London: Rebel Press. (Original work published in 1967)
Hurtgen, Joseph. “Archival Domination in Fahrenheit 451.” Journal of Science Fiction 1.2 (2016): 36–46.
Perlo-Freeman, Sam. Tan, Andrew TH, ed. “The United Kingdom arms industry in a globalized world.” The global arms trade: a handbook. Routledge, 2014.
Wilson III, Isaiah. Tan, Andrew TH, ed. “Insurgencies and the impact on arms procurement.” The global arms trade: a handbook. Routledge, 2014.
