Humans dream of a perfect place, a utopia, but because they know that perfection can only be reached through a state of denial, they continue to over contemplate the idea of perfection. In short, they pretend that nothing is wrong. However, fulfillment is in the hands of the individual for the thinkers, the revolutionary minded like Samuel Adams when he claims, “No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders.” Providing the idea that those who believe in perfection can be seen as ignorant due to the fact they’ve willingly hidden themselves from the truth. Ray Bradbury’s, Fahrenheit 451 is an expletory example of how influential ignorance is on a society.

Knowledge is a powerful gift but yet is still handled like Pandora’s Box. “We must all be alike. Not everyone is born free and equal as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal” (Bradbury 62). The government doesn’t shy away from this gift and uses knowledge to their advantage, letting it be a lower equal playing field among the remainder of the community. From the pedestal that the leaders stand on, they stare down at the community who will never go up or down until, they take a risk at knowledge. “Those who don’t build must burn” (Bradbury 97). Those who burn are as dimwitted as the bystanders due to the fact that they witness it and allow it to happen. Though the burning of fire both occurs and spreads faster, it only takes one miraculous builder to influence many others. Like Adam’s quote yes there will always be a vast majority of ignorant people waiting to be awoken, but, what’s important is the minority who have finally awoken from the nightmare of ignorance and this slavery.

The government is so influential to the point where people bend over backwards for it. “Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime! And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering” (Bradbury 84). Attempting to fill a citizen’s sieve of a brain with knowledge is ridiculous because the government acts as a filter to remove rational thought. Though it may seem as though a surplus amount of knowledge something would stick but on the contraire without some sort of retainer all it will do is leave faster, keeping air heads dependent. “We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam”(Bradbury 90). Citizens are serving as dependent flowers waiting for their caretaker, the government to save them. Unfortunately, the citizens have been abandoned and their only way to turn is against one another to survive. Citizens cannot grasp the idea of impossibility because they have never been told so otherwise and repeat a never ending cycle.

In conclusion, even though ignorance is glorified, along with it comes a loss of human connection and interaction. Though it may seem pointless, without it like Bradbury’s novel many people would become suicidal because they have no purpose in life. Though ignorance appears to be a perfect picture in the distance, close up it is exposed for the true monstrosity that it really is.