The survival of the eccentric in a hyperreal culture: Media consumption and the public sphere in George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

Abstract

This thesis explores eccentricity, media consumption, totalitarianism, capitalism, and the public sphere through George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I present the concept of the eccentric to showcase how to strengthen the public sphere and resist both totalitarianism and mindless capitalist consumption. By exploring these topics, I seek to shed light on how the novels in question predict threats to discourse, diversity of thought, and democracy. Both of the novels, through totalitarianism in 1984 and mindless consumerism in Fahrenheit 451, emphasize the deterioration of the liberal humanist tradition that revolves around the thinking individual who remains a necessary foundation for true democracy and its democratic culture. This thesis further asserts that establishing a genuine public sphere, by allowing the masses of people who have no direct power to wield influence over governments or other sectional interests, will create a more democratic equilibrium through the conflict of ideas and ideologies. These conflicts of ideas will enable a society to better reflect on itself and subsequently improve. This societal self-reflection induced by eccentrics aids societies in resisting aspects of oppressive ideologies by utilizing critical thinking to point out the flaws an orthodoxy cannot or will not see.