Fahrenheit 451 Technology and Modernization Quotes

How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Part.Paragraph)

Quote #1

"All of those chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the master file downstairs. It would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on the Hound's ‘memory,’ a touch of amino acids, perhaps. That would account for what the animal did just now. Reacted toward me." (1.230)

Technology is so fierce in this novel that it is given even the power of human emotion.

Quote #2

"Thank God for that. You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and I being in and part of those incredible parlours." (2.138)

The TV parlours overwhelm because they have no substance. They rely on the senses because they can not touch the mind.

Quote #3

"Will you turn the parlour off?" he asked.

"That's my family." (1.493-4)

As a term of any meaning and significance, "family" has gone by the wayside in this world. Montag has already admitted that he might not cry if his wife died, and Mildred’s girlfriends later say the same of their husbands. By this definition of family – as a relationship without emotion or love – the TV characters actually do fit the bill.