Circus
Saturday, May 01, 2010 @ 4:51 pm.
I've been thinking back to the first time I read Fahrenheit 451.
I remember just reading it, liking it, thinking it was very insightful and all that, then going into Lit class certain that it would spark some sort of intellectual discussion.
It was only in Lit class that I realised the horror of the entire situation; the perverse values perpetrated all through the city, the minds of the people stuffed full of cotton wool, drugs, sounds and pictures, the knowledge and people killed for the sake of happiness, the loss of human touch, contact and acknowledgement.
For example, Mildred. When I read the sections with her and Montag in it I saw nothing at all; I thought it was just normal, to be glossed over, to carry on with the original plot.
I found myself wondering
how had I missed this?
The answer's pretty simple. It's so simple that it's terrifying.
I had assumed that it was normal. That it was normal for Mildred to completely disregard her husband, to lie in her bed all day with her Seashells fused to her ears, to sit and erect a human wall to supplement her other three until she could install her last one and render her world complete, to forget to take pills and OD without knowing it.
This is what our world is coming to; this is what's being considered normal.
To blow people off when you decide you "don't want to think any more
(I left my head and my heart on the dance floor)", to lie in bed with earphones in and listening to a song over and over again five hundred thousand times, when even that song is just repeating the same syllable over and over again to make a melody, to spend the day staring at a screen in front of you while the other person next to you is doing the same thing and you don't even talk to each other, to eat chocolate, sleep, play Wii when you feel down and distract yourself to try and feel better.
And I'm scared.