Blog #5- Farenheit 451 - Writer's Craft: Paradox

The paradoxs in the novel are used to stimulate a question to Montag and the readers about the reality of existence of an object that is present physically but not present mentally. In the beginning of the book, Montag uses a paradoxical phase when he sees Millie in the bedroom: " The room was not empty"(11) and then quotes " The room was indeed empty"(12). Here, Montag refers that Millie is in the room physically, thus the room is not empty. But the room is empty in the way that Milli is not present mentally in the room. Thus, Millie is half-alive. With this same idea, Millie and everyone in the society are half-alive in the way that they all are present physically but not mentally because the parlors over control their mind. Similarly, Montag uses a paradox again on Mechanical Hound as he quotes "The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live.."(24). Throught out the novel, Bradbury uses paradoxes between life and death and implies that life is based on awareness and knowledge.

Furthermore, Bradbury uses the paradoxes as the "truth" in Montag's world where people believe that they live in reality when they are really living under the parlor and blinded to the truth. Montag later finds out people are like to the machines (such as the mechanical hound) that think what they are told to think. When Montag realizes that he lived under false reality, he begins to seek for truth from the books.