For a long time science fiction writers have thrilled and have been challenged readers
with visions of the future and future worlds. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury are books that both offered an insight into what they
expected man, society, and what civilization will become in the future time. Both authors
show that society, civilizations and expectations from men can be completely different in
future time. Of the many similarities among the two books, similarities that stand out the
most would have to be, the outlawed reading of books; the superficial preservation of
beauty and happiness; and lastly the idea of the protagonist as being a loner or an outcast
from society because of his differences in beliefs.
Outlawed reading. To us this sounds very strange. In the societies of both of these
books, however, it is a common and almost completely unquestioned law. In Brave New
World reading is something that all classes are conditioned against from birth. In the very
beginning of the novel we see a group of infants who are given bright, attractive books
but are exposed to an explosion and a shrieking siren when they reach out for them.
Through out the his or her life, the infant learns to keep a distance between himself and
the books, Because of the conditioning experiences that infants went through, The mere
sight of books made people scream and shout in terror. We come to learn that the basic
reasoning behind this conditioning against reading in Brave New World was because
"You couldn't have lower-caste people wasting the Community's time over books, and
there was always the risk of their reading something, which might undesirably
decondition one of their reflexes" (Huxley 22). In Fahrenheit 451 the outlawing of book
reading is taken to an even greater extent. In this novel the whole purpose of a
"fireman&qu...