Comparison-Contrast Essay by Valentyn Degtyar

“Fahrenheit 451 Vs The Matrix”

What is the true life? What lies beyond things taken for granted and is not it something wrong with the world people create? These are questions that fiction and anti-utopies raise inspiring to think broadly of the human world. Two movies – “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Matrix” suggest particularly global cautionary tales. These stories as cinematographic narratives seem to be artifacts of comparable scale, they have something similar, but have differences as well.

Both stories of “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Matrix” develop as an enlightment of men with a characteristic role in the system that is exposed through the course of all action. It is noticable that the two main heroes in these movies – Montag and Neo respectfully – are male. Women are heroines of secondary scale and in both stories from the very beginning they inspire men for their deeds. This sounds usual for heroic and fiction films, whereas women seem to play more prominent roles in non-fiction and realistic novels.

The plots of the two movies illustrate worlds of total deception people live in. People are the source of their own deception. In “Fahrenheit 451” society refused from books and search of sence replacing it with systematized and conveyor-supplied interactions. Working hours there are uniformed and at home the mass-media colonizes the private area and formulates people’s desires. “The Matrix” presents even a more radical idea – that people had created artificial intelligence that then put them into a completely virtual world, the matrix that forms them and imposes limitations on them. Both of these stories indicate semi-appocalyptic ways that people can lead themselves into. The difference is in the motives underlying the stories. “Fahrenheit 451” warns that visual media and a strict supression system can become a machine driving society into a life without a sence. Here the call for waking up and raising consciousness is clear. On the contrary, “The Matrix” seems to be largely motivated by a desire to escape reality and transcend physical boundaries and natural possibilities. This makes stunning special effects for the screen and thrills the audience, but then the suggestion for enlightment may be too general and unfocused. Nevertheless, interpretations of “The Matrix” story can be rather impressive and possibly motivating for critical reflection of reality and search.

It is interesting to look conceptually at the protest against the system as it is portrayed in “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Matrix”. In the first case ex-fireman Montag, the man who used to burn books, sets his boss on fire and runs away to people who hide away, read books, learn them by heart and then burn them themselves before the firemen or police do that. The resistance community thus chose a strange way to stand against the odds of their time, which is obviously not the most effective way that can be imagined. The scenes from the ‘bookers’ community, as they are called, retelling their books in the forrest are rather surrealistic and seem to depict another side of the coin – that book narratives also move people away from their actual realities and deceive their mind. The same sence of ambiguity about the resistance is present in “The Matrix”. Neo, the ex-programmer, learns to hack the code of the matrix in real-time and fly around as superman, beating dozens of enemies, he and the resistance fighters desperately battle against the overwhelming robotic forces and their only hope for victory is to follow the prophecy of an elderly lady known as the Oracle. Later on they learn that she herself is not human, but a programm, representative of the other intelligent race, the machines. In the end, it turns out that the outcome of people’s struggles was foreseen, Neo dies as a martyr, but the remaning people are left to sustain human resource and the new matrix cycle is launched by the machines.

In sum, movies like the described anti-utopias provoke to think of the illusions and limits that people create for themselves and look out for a positive change. The stories of “Fahrenheit 451” and “The Matrix” develop as revelations, they are grotesque and fantastic, male-centered and action-focused, weak on feelings, although suggesting to turn on the intuition. The practical message of the first movie is sharper than that of the second one, yet “The Matrix” is funnier. Both movies leave ambiguous impressions about the resistance against the system, but the necessity for critical awareness and a bit of healthy unrest about the common ways of the world we make up is obvious.