Given that this story takes place in a future that never happened, you would think that understanding the social behaviors of the time would be hard. Luckily, Ray Bradbury got the point across about how this society functioned. By that, I mean that their society did not function. In the world Bradbury created, people did not think enough to cause problems or create issues with each other, so there where not really any social issues. However, they think little enough to create plenty of behavioral issues. For instance, no one values anyone else’s life, and many do not value their own. Besides not valuing them, they often wish to end them. How nice.
When asked about whether or not she goes to school, Clarisse says she is afraid of her classmates because they kill each other, and the rest of them do not seem to mind (Bradbury 30). When people are not thinking about things and noticing things, I do not think they are really living. Without thought, what makes them different from animals? They do not really live, so it would be difficult to value their lives or the lives of others. One of Mildred’s friends says that her and her husband made a plan to not cry and then get remarried immediately if one of them died (Bradbury 95). She must not really care about him or value him at all or at least the amount of him that there is. The people that pump out Mildred's stomach and blood do not care that she is a person, they just refer to her attempted suicide as a “problem” (Bradbury 15). The lack of care or emotion in this future society stays very true to how the society would be given the circumstances. It stirs up a lot of behavioral issues that are expected given how the world is.
Another behavioral epidemic of the author’s society is suicide and attempts at suicide. Mildred's attempts suicide at the beginning of the book (Bradbury 13). A husband of one of Mildred's friends jumps off of a roof (Bradbury 94). When people do not think, they do not care what they do or where they go. They do not do well. Something inside them starts dying. Humans were made to think, feel, and create. Take that away and something horrible is missing, something people do not want to live without, and they do not even think enough to realize that what they are missing is thought. It is really sad when you think about it. They are losing all reason to live.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print.
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