You walk through the streets of the town you've grown up in, surveying the old gray buildings and the people in them. Everywhere you look, it is always the same. The people all around may as well be identical robots for all the difference in them. In this world, there are so many invisible rules as to how to live your life that the people who inhabit it have become ashamed of the things that make them who they are. People are afraid to show themselves and stand up for what's right because they're scared of what other people may think of them.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman who, at first, didn’t know what his life was about. He spent his days going by routine, and blindly following orders even when what he was doing was completely wrong. When he meets the innocent Clarisse McClellan who shows his how life should be, he begins to see his world for what it is: truly nefarious and in desperate need of change. The clearly ironic mode of this novel comes through when Clarisse is killed by a car and Montag becomes on his own with his new revelation. He knows now that his entire life has been scripted as just a phony actor on the stage, just like everyone else’s around him. However, when he tries to send a message to the world by disobeying the rules, his house gets burned down because of it. People are blind when it comes to the truth, because they don’t want to be told that their entire lives have been done wrong.
The fact that Montag’s discoveries were being shunned by his peers is strikingly similar to the plot in “Plato’s Allegory of the Cave”. In the allegory, a man who has been chained to the inside of a cave his whole life, telling stories about a fire he can’t even see from behind, breaks through his chains and sees the sun for the first time. In Fahrenheit 451, this represents Montag opening up to the world around him when he meets Clarisse. Clarisse is a representation of the sun. However, in the allegory, when the man returns to the cave and tells the other men who have been living there that there’s more to life than they think, he is killed for his words. Montag may not have been killed for what he believed, but he had his entire life’s worth stripped from him in front of his eyes. This is what happens when you try to change the beliefs of people who believe that they are right. For those people, ignorance is bliss.
“Plato’s Allegory of the Cave” and Fahrenheit 451 may be highly unrealistic, but they are true in the way of the human condition. If you take a look around, you can see examples of resistance to change everywhere. Modern times tell you what to wear, what foods to eat, what products to use, and even what music is “in” at that particular time. No one wants to break out, and be different, for the fear of being discriminated against. In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen hide their true feelings about their work because they don’t want to lose everything they have. They just walk on the same path as everyone else, staying on the safe side, keeping their feet in line. It’s hard to break free of the crowd, but at some point you have to stop and ask yourself, “Is this really how I’m meant to live my life?” Once you figure that out and find your own road to take, your life and the people around you will benefit from it.
Therefore, the next time you walk down the street and see that everyone around you is the same, you should have the courage to stand up and be different. If everyone is wearing a gray suit, do something uncanny and wear yellow. Don’t fall into the pattern of everyone else. When most of the world is afraid to show themselves, it is important for those with a difference sense of self to stand up for what they believe in. That is how the world will maintain its balance for all of the years to come.
