Beyond the ideological siege : a critical reading of bradbury's fahrenheit 451

Abstract

The current paper is set to investigate the clash of ideologies and culturesas encoded in the American novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This qualitative study aims at analysing the narrative text, from Marxist perspective and Foucault’s views on power and knowledge. It is hypothesized that knowledge and anti-knowledge reshape the clash of cultures in human communities. The objectives of this research paper are to investigate the clash of ideologies or, more specifically, the clash of epistemic systems in a dystopian society, as well as to unmask the games played by the political powers to annihilate human awareness and identity to convince the community to practice the culture of bourgeoisie. As a mass consumption community, this anti-intellectual ideology results in the sterility of life. One finding of the study is that the cultural shock experience by, Montag, the protagonist enables him to resist and break the ideological siege which is imposed by power. He became the modern hero of the culture who joined the elite or the sophisticated culture experiences by the Book people or the renegade intellectuals who believe in the progress of mankind through the sophisticated philosophy of loving and reading books.