Fahrenheit 451

I believe Fahrenheit 451 is a great example of a negative utopia, even though the genre of dystopias can be rather preachy and over-done. One of the best symbols from this book is Beatty. Beatty is obviously a self loathing man; his life's work being the burning of books and yet he seems to be one of the most well-read people in the entire novel, quoting Shakespeare and the Bible to prove his points. Montag even had dreams where he and Beatty had arguments, both of them avidly quoting ancient and long burned authors and poets, shouting line after line of incinerated literature, showing us that even he can see the captain's true nature.
Montag and Beatty, prior to the very end of the novel, seemed to clash entirely with their ideology. Montag discovers, with the help of the enigmatic Clarisse McClellan, that there is more to life than burning books, more to existing than making an example of the scholar. Prior to meeting Clarisse his work had been a spectacle, he, and the other fireman, were nothing but a roman circus for the mindless masses of 'gilded fools'. But after his brief relationship with Clarisse he had come to see the true meaning of his work and of his life. He had come to see that his purpose in society was to keep intelligence from the people, to make them stupefied masses that were filled with nothing but facts and useless memorization. Beatty, too, had come to see that this was all he was doing, not protecting them from clashing ideas but keeping them dull and utterly ignorant. We, as the readers, are not aware of when he had come to see this but it is blatantly obvious being as Beatty continually spouts lines from literature and does not cling to his parlor and 'family', nor does he wear the seashell radios that seem oh so popular with the modern man.
This novel is very near the epitome of a dystopia; nearly on par with Orwell's 1984. The masses in the society of Fahrenheit, however, seem to be the ones that brought about the demise of literature and independent thought. Unlike in many dystopias wherein the government forces their doctrines upon the people, in Fahrenheit the people themselves are the ones that caused their subjugation. The government of Bradbury's world only stepped in to enforce the banning of books after the mass media had taken hold of the citizens, pushing any desire for books from their minds and bringing their self-imposed dementia to bear. This itself is a remarkable symbol, criticizing modern society's rapidly expanding need for the mass media and its immersion in information. Bradbury's novel merely expands upon this, exaggerating it, although believably, to show the depth of our growing addiction.
"What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives." -- Captain Beatty.

Captain Beatty says this to Montag in order to try and disuade him from making the same mistakes he himself had made. Beatty had explained to Montag that he had tried to slide-rule and measure the universe but to no avail, that trying to understand and equate what it is to be was utterly impossible. Beatty's own attempts to understand the universe have never come to fruition which leads him to believe it's impossible to do so. The entire novel has an air of utter despair due to the characters' lack of understanding. The novel gave me a feeling that without literature, or even the possibility of reading and comprehending literature, the world would be peopled by ignorant masses of media-addicted, violent dunces. The depressing nature of this understanding of the meaning of the work is enough to make you want to get your hands on, and read every book you can, abosorbing its knowledge and words into yourself so that it would never be forgotten.