There were various things that stood out to me when reading to book that related to our world today. Right in the beginning I noticed that something was weird. When Clarisse, a young teenage girl, was walking alone at midnight on a dark street, I knew that this book was going to be odd and weird. It made the book even weirder when a man that she has hardly met started walking with her and she didn’t get nervous or scared at all. I think that today, not many young girls Clarisse’s age would willingly go walking at midnight on a dark road for one thing, but if a grown man that they didn’t know came up to them, they would probably run for their lives and be totally freaked out, at least I would. The thing that is so scary about common threats to individual freedom in the world today is that just going for a night walk, whether it be at midnight or just dark out, isn’t possible anymore without being concerned about if something will happen. So many rapes happen these days, and that takes away from the individual right you have to take a walk around your block, or on your green at night, yet these days its so scary that many times people don’t feel comfortable doing so because of the fact that so many people get taken advantage of when alone especially. This issue connects to the warnings outlined in the novel because in the novel it is shown that people aren’t concerned with others, and expect nothing but kindness when approaching complete strangers. These days that is very rare. People who are extra friendly to others are often characterized as weird, scary or freaky to others, especially if the friendly person is older and the one approached is a young person like a teenager. Its kind of sad what our world has come to that people don’t feel as if they can do certain things without being with others because they may be threatened by strangers. Another thing that has been taken away from people these days is that if the police for any reason need to get a hold of any of your records, or where you are at times during the day, they are able to get it, and this was relatively illustrated in the book. In the book they are extremely paranoid that the government knows that they have the books. Many other things that were shown in the book relate to modern day threats on individual freedoms, yet these are the few that stood out to me the most.
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Jordan: Interesting thoughts on the idea of personal safety, considering Clarisse walking alone at night. Remember, the novel was written in 1953 - a much different time. I also found a website in which Bradbury talks about his novel. There is a video clip in which he explains how he came up with the idea of the novel and the scene with Clarisse and Montag. You might find it interesting to hear what the author has to say.
Go to this site: http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html#
Scroll down a little and click on the video called "Bradbury on Fahrenheit 451"
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