Fahrenheit 451 Symbolism
Ray Bradbury’s satire, Fahrenheit 451, is a novel full of symbols criticizing the modern world. Among those symbols appears The Hound. The Hound’s actions and even its shape are reflections of the society Bradbury has predicted to come. Montag’s world continues on without thought; without any real reason. There is no learning, no growth, and no purpose. “The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in the dark corner of the firehouse” (24), wrote Bradbury to describe this hound. Like the hound, society was alive yet dead as well, drudging through life; mindless. The Hound was a programmed robot that didn’t thing on its own; that only acted as it was told. Captain Beatty states, “It just ‘functions’. It has a trajectory we decide on for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. Its only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity” (20), and “It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think” (27). That society was programmed to not think, wonder or ask why. They didn’t do anything that they weren’t supposed to do. Today, everything is happening just as The Hound is controlled. Programming is happening in our very world. Take schools for example. Consider Pavlov’s experiment with ringing bells to provoke an automatic response in dogs. He rang a bell; the dogs salivated expecting food. The school board rings a bell, and students rise to show respect for the American flag because ‘now is the designated time to be patriotic, and you will or face consequences”. The bell rings, students stand. The bell rings, the students sit, the student walks, the student is allowed to eat. We’re robots in the programmed society. The perversion of Montag’s society was eminent in the appearance of the Mechanical Hound. A