What Are The Parlor Walls In Fahrenheit 451

Question

In Ray Bradbury's classic dystopian novel, the parlor walls overwhelm characters with interactive shows—how do these immersive screens actually influence people's reality?

melai · Answer

In the world of ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury, the walls of the parlor are huge, interactive television screens that command the space of a typical family room. They are used for very superficial purposes – i.e. to entertain and connect with others in a very pseudo-form of family. This also is indicative of the very anti-intellectual world that the characters live in. I was able to get a ‘funky’ feeling for a very immersive environment in the short story ‘The Room Beyond the Door’. A man finds a room in his new apartment and is able to connect with the lives of total strangers. He struggles to understand the full implications of the space and the intrusion into his private life that it brings.

Owen · Answer

In the parlor of the residence of Mildred and her husband, the walls are covered in floor-to-ceiling screens showing brilliant interactive shows. The characters in the shows talk to you. The shows are more than just entertainment, they are a substitute for life. Mildred says that the characters in the wall-screens are her family and that shows how out of touch most people are these days. The walls in this parlor are another tool by which the society can be kept in a docile state by having their minds full of constant noise that they are never left to themselves to think about. This is so very relevant today with our phones. The ways in which media can numb us to reality is excellent.

Joseph · Answer

In his novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury the parlor walls are enormous TV screens in the living rooms. These TV screens are not like the TVs we know today. They are interactive and even like a kind of virtual reality (like the VR glasses today). You can talk to the actors in the TV shows and the shows are made so that you can feel part of the story. The walls represent empty space and how in our society today we prefer to watch empty TV programs and movies rather than have real contact with other people. In the novel the wife of the main character, Montag, is a typical example of how brainless TV watching can make people. She spends most of her time watching ‘families’ on the TV walls and seems to be happy in her empty world.

The parlor walls are also a symbol of the government’s totalitarianism. Instead of stimulating citizens to be critical, to rebel or to have thoughts of their own, they are so filled with constant information that it cannot be processed; images, colors and sounds in rapid succession distract the viewer, much like the constant beeps and messages from today’s smart phones. In contrast to the stimulus of books, the parlor walls require the passive reception of entertainment information, impersonal and superficial. And yes, this is again remarkable in its foresight, especially since today social media and streaming services are filled with the same amount of mind-numbing entertainment.

Claire · Answer

When I read “Fahrenheit 451” as a teenager, the parlor walls stuck with me because they seemed so familiar. Today, these hyper-addictive walls of screens are how people avoid reality while the world burns. The way Mildred is addicted to her “TV family” is especially heartbreaking, because she prefers to escape into a fictional world rather than face her troubled life with her husband. These wall are the writer’s dire warning to us of what could happen if entertainment is valued over truth. And it’s getting close to that point in our culture, as algorithms repeatedly serve up the most compelling content to keep us clicking.

Delaney · Answer

In the world of ‘Fahrenheit 451’, the walls of the parlor are filled with giant TVs. These are not merely showing programs but are in fact life itself for the viewer. Of course, this is all seen and portrayed in a very negative light. Mildred’s TV addiction is quite revealing to her empty life. She would rather spend time talking to the characters on her TV than speaking with her husband. This is a scathing criticism of passive consumption and is quite relevant today.

Teresita Pedrido · Answer

It would be awesome to have some seriously weird parlor wall entertainment, though. Why go with the blandest possible family themed show when you could display some trippy abstract art, play an endless nature documentary or even an interactive play? The fact that such mediocre content is even possible is, ironically, the point. Instead of unlocking the medium's full potential to create thought-provoking works, this kind of content is designed to be the exact opposite: to engage you just enough to keep you from tuning out.

The banality is the weapon. Here, as in most places, great art disrupts and mediocre art pacifies. The Federal Government isn’t commissioning or funding thought-provoking films; it’s funding the equivalent of daytime TV. Mental sluggishness is better for citizens than mental arousal. This is the epitome of mediocre art, as a political tool.

Kathleen Chidester · Answer

A most unusual and somewhat creepy religious aspect to the wall family of TV is that they function as a pseudo-community, even a pseudo-spirituality for theviewers. As with any religion, there is ritual (schedule-viewing), scripture (the stories of the various plots), a huge following (viewers), and the promise of salvation/fulfillment in terms of feeling. All of this in a most thoroughly secular and consumeristic religious context. Mildred believes in the family of TV to fill her needs for comfort, for structure, for religious salvation. She is a true believer and reacts with the same ferocity as any other true religious fanatic when she perceives a threat to the family.

This is relevant to the book’s exploration of what fills the void when all traditional ways of gaining meaning are taken away (religion, deep art, philosophy). Something will fill the vacuum created by the absence of these ways of gaining meaning, and in The Sparkling Wall the something that fills this vacuum is a commercialized, superficial way of connecting with other humans. The parlor walls become the church of a godless, thoughtless society and find a way to offer salvation by distraction.

Cynthia Gillingham · Answer

The Parlor Walls as modern “bread and circuses”- in a very metaphorical sense. The Roman emperors kept the masses docile for fear of revolt by giving them free food and entertainment- circuses. The government in the world of Fahrenheit 451 keeps the citizens’ minds off the impending war, the loss of personal liberty by entertaining them with the Parlor Walls. The Parlor Walls are the circuses- so very distracting from the lack of substance in one’s life, from the war looming in the distance, from the lack of real political freedom in society today.

So for the price of your liberty of thought, your feelings and your capacity to think for yourself, you can be constantly and facilely amused. In the novel, people like Mildred have chosen this. They have chosen an easy life over a hard one, being amused over being challenged and grown by a work that demands to be understood.

star cruz · Answer

In addition to the social commentary in this scene, there is also so much wonderful dystopian set design. Living in a room with huge faces that constantly scream out huge, dramatic lines at you is a very claustrophobic space. You really get a sense of how Montag feels in his home which has become a hostile space. The walls of his home are like having all of these obnoxious, loud, persistent guests who never leave you. They are all over the space, invading your private space, and no place is left untouched and silent.

This is not a cozy living room with a television in the corner. It is a theater. In fact, the entire home has been consumed by the theater. The home which once was a haven for the self or for the family has become a public space for the transmission of state-sanctioned propaganda. In this place, the private space for individuals and families has been erased. In his own home, Montag is merely an audience member. His rebellion begins with a simple desire for silence. He wants to turn off the machines. In this place, that is a revolutionary act.

Jolene Greenland · Answer

I have been viewing television as the perversion of the hearth in the traditional home. While the fireplace is the central point for warmth, light and union for the family in the old home, in Montag’s house the center of the parlor is where the TV walls sit, sending forth a harsh, artificially-lit glare and/or a din of unrelated sounds to scatter his family. In place of true warmth from a physical hearth the TV walls emit a false sense of warmth from their glows, desensitizing the family and preventing true human contact.

Instead of drawing people together to have conversation, the parlor walls scatter the viewers off in separate solo carousels of consumption. When Mildred’s friends drop by for a visit to her house, they come in to watch the walls. At home, they watch individual screens instead of being together with each other. This type of communal activity is destructive of community. And in this world of fireplaces that burn the old centers of wisdom as fuel, the same activity of public destruction of truth in fire is matched by a cold and remote isolate activity of private destruction of intimacy instead by a flickering electronic light on a wall.

Peggy Lamb · Answer

This sort of makes me want to take a look at my living room and feel guilty for the way I’ve decorated it. Like, right now, I’m looking at my big, dumb TV and feeling kind of bad. Maybe I should read a book or something. After this episode.

What Are The Parlor Walls In Fahrenheit 451

11 Answers

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