The "Easy Way Out" in Farenheit 451

Recently I have been keeping up on the Fahrenheit 451 blogs that Mr. Thompson has been doing, and I’ve decided to talk about this book.  

I’m in Barney’s English class, so we didn’t read the book.  We’ve been doing individual writing and reading, and I was curious to see what the other class was doing.  Many ninth graders were walking around with Fahrenheit 451, and I realized that that was one thing happening in their class.  I went to the library and promptly got a copy of the book. After I got it, I became so entranced with it that I didn’t get to bed until 2 hours later than I usually do.  I couldn’t put it down.  It was an excellent book, and I couldn’t, and didn’t want to, stop thinking about it.  Throughout the whole book, comments kept hitting me like a load of bricks.  I kept wondering if I was guilty of the things mentioned, and I hoped that I wasn’t.  The culture seemed so warped, yet it is scary how similar it is to ours.  People feel that anything worth waiting for or thinking about isn’t worth it.  I kept thinking about “the family.”   This is how people live their lives.  They are willing to drop everything to watch some “crucial” TV episode.  I also thought about how everything was so loud and distracting.  People don’t know how to sit still, be quiet, and think!  It’s scary because you see it at school all of the time.  People make noise in class just to hear themselves.  They don’t care how it will affect others.  They just can’t stand sitting still.  Everyone constantly tries to take the “easy way out.”  (Just a quick paragraph to explain this because it’s a concept that I understand more and more as I watch people).

In life, people are always looking for the easiest way to do things.  They put things off, or they choose the easiest term project, or they try to get out of everything.  People never look for the way to improve themselves or their surroundings.  They look for what appears to be the easiest.  A guy in my neighborhood told a story about one of his summers, and then he made an analogy.  

“This summer, it was very hot.  It was my job to mow the lawn every Saturday.  Well, one Saturday, I began mowing the lawn.  I mowed the front yard because that is what everyone sees.  Then, as I was moving to the backyard, I realized there was something I wanted to watch on TV.  Wouldn’t it be so much easier to just watch the show and then finish the lawn next week?  It isn’t like anyone’s going to see it…  This continued for several Saturdays.  The front yard always got mowed because that is what people saw, but it didn’t matter that the back wasn’t done, since no one but his family saw it.  I rationalized that I was taking the “easy way out.”  I only had to do half of the work, and the rest didn’t matter.  It wasn’t hurting anyone, and I got to watch everything I wanted.  Then, the day of judgment came.  I had to mow the backyard, but now instead of it taking twenty minutes to do the whole thing, I had to stop every ten feet to empty a filled bag.  The lawn took me hours and hours to do, instead of the short twenty minutes each week.  I hadn’t taken the easy way out.  I had taken the long, hard way.  At the time, I didn’t realize what I was really saying when I thought I was doing it an easier way.  I had to pay for my actions later, and the consequence was greater than I could have anticipated.”

This greatly applies to the society in Fahrenheit 451.  At the time, it appeared everything was going fine, but eventually there is going to be a great price to pay for their actions.  Sure, it is important to have fun and be entertained, but that is not the reason we are here.  It is more important for people to learn and experience things that can help them in life.  If they don’t, they won’t be able to handle life’s challenges.  Ignorant and lazy people do not do well in these circumstances.  They will eventually have to make up for their lack of knowledge, but it will probably be too late.  They will not be able to recover, and, because they tried to take the “easy way,” they are going to have many harsh consequences.              

While I was reading this book, I couldn’t figure out why the message seemed so familiar, and then I realized that we had just read Anthem.  Do you think Mr. Thompson’s trying to get some message across??