Novel Comparison

Both Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451 have dissatisfied protagonists who live in dystopic civilizations. Both dystopias are carefully planned out to become a utopia-like society. However, both societies restrict their citizens very strictly. In Fahrenheit 451, people are prohibited from reading books, and if found guilty of reading or possessing one, you are severely punished by getting your house burnt down. Brave New World has several restrictions that the authority implements on their people. First of all, there is one inescapable restriction, which is the conditioning. In this world, if you live in civilization, from birth you are “conditioned” to blindly obey and respect the authority, no questioning. In both dystopias, there are “cures” for unhappiness: the parlor from Fahrenheit 451, feelies in Brave New World, and more strongly the soma also used in Brave New World.
Guy Montag, Bernard Marx, and John Savage are all unhappy in their dystopic societies. These protagonists blame their unhappiness on what they don’t have. The governments in both novels withhold information from the public. In Brave New World there are no books from before Henry Ford’s time, and in Fahrenheit 451, all books in general are banned. In Brave New World , they aren’t allowed to settle down with one person from the opposite sex. You also don’t get to know your family, for there are no families. Love is a foreign word. They don’t feel free under this government restriction, so they both go to seek out answers.

Authority's Restriction on Our Freedom

In our society, we are limited to follow the authority. Although we are capable of rebelling against it, there are consequences to our actions. Some could say that this denies us of our freedom of choice, that we as human beings are allowed to do however they so please. This is just nonsense, people that say things like this are usually plaintive in all aspects of life and are generally unhappy. They believe that their personal freedom is higher ranked than the freedom of society. Freedom is a controversial term, for people can do many things in the name of freedom. What some people don’t realize that restricting freedom is not always bad, Freedom isn’t always good. Our government restricts us on what we say, what we write, what we wear and what we show. These are all limitations of our freedom. But we need to ask ourselves, why does the government restrict us? Is it because they are an evil corporation that want to exploit us as their minions, or do they do so because it is necessary for maintaining peace and to increase citizen satisfaction. The restrictions are for our own good, that’s why government systems are present around the world, because without them, chaos would rule, which would diminish every ounce of freedom that we possess. We should be grateful that our government does such a great job at giving us so much freedom and still manages to fairly maintain order.