In the book Fahrenheit 451, books are prohibited and, if found, burned.
Montag, one of the firemen, finally realizes that no one is an individual.
No one has their own opinion and no one is unique.
Montag begins to collect books, knowing it was wrong.
He flees the city and finds Granger,
an individual with photographic memory to store his most precious stories inside his head.
Ray Bradbury believes that any individual can change the world with the actions they make
as assumed by what he writes in Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury writes, “A child or a book or a painting
or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.
Or a garden planted.
Something your hand touched some way
so your soul has somewhere to go when you die,
and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there” (Bradbury 149-150).
Bradbury is trying to say that individuals are the ones that change the world.
It’s not the people who go with the crowd,
but the people who don’t need the crowd to tell them what to think.
There are many real world examples of this.
On the 23rd of March last year, a distressed woman pulled up to the drive thru window of Dutch Bros Coffee.
It turned out that the woman lost her 37-year-old husband the night before.
The teenage employees noticed her grieving,
so they decided to give her free coffee and pray with her, regardless of their different religious backgrounds.
That small action changed the woman’s life.
Anyone can shape the world, even you.
Plant a tree, compliment a stranger, draw a picture for someone.
The world is in your hands and it doesn’t matter how you change it, as long as you’re you.
