Discourse and Power: A Study on the Role of Secondary Characters in Fahrenheit 451, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Literature

Download Discourse and Power: A Study on the Role of Secondary Characters in Fahrenheit 451 and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Literature in PDF only on Docsity! Student Ht 2019 Examensarbete för kandidatexamen, 15 hp Engelska A Discourse study of Fahrenheit 451 Hegemony, Otherness and Class struggle Fredrik Mäki Table of contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................. 5 2. Discourse Analysis and societal power structures .................................................. 7 3. Althusser, state, ideology, and subject .................................................................. 10 4. Hegemony, the ideologue, mass-man and the other ............................................. 12 5. Characters ............................................................................................................. 14 5.1. Captain Beatty ................................................................................................... 14 5.2. Clarisse .............................................................................................................. 14 5.3. Faber .................................................................................................................. 15 5.4. Granger .............................................................................................................. 15 6. Analysis - Mapping characters and discourses ..................................................... 16 6.1. Orders of discourse ............................................................................................ 16 6.2. Hegemony .......................................................................................................... 17 6.3. Otherness ........................................................................................................... 22 6.4. Class-struggle .................................................................................................... 26 7. Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 28 8. Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 31 5 1. Introduction This study explores how secondary characters’ discourses shape the protagonist, Guy Montag, in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. The book presents a “society intent on the pursuit of happiness” (Myers-Dickinson 79), where happiness stems from consumption rather than thought. Family homes are dark or dimly lit at night. Interpersonal social gatherings consist mostly of watching television together, on wall- sized screens on 3 or 4 walls of the parlors. In bars and cafés, jokeboxes play the same jokes repeatedly. Roadside adverts are several hundred feet long, to allow viewing from cars rushing by. The populace live life at break-neck speed without much quiet-time to reflect, to smell old leaves or to taste the rain. Even in bed small earbud-like speakers provide entertainment, while sleeping pills enable falling asleep quickly, without time to think. Citizens must not keep books, and much less read them, lest they want to be unhappy. If a citizen finds out that another keeps books, the government must be informed of the transgression. When the alarm is raised, the fire brigade is sent out to torch the offender’s house, to rid the world of the damaging literary text. State ideology proclaims that knowledge equals unhappiness, and competing ideas are repressed, controlled, and hunted. Dissidents are not allowed. Nuclear wars have raged, and new wars are on the horizon. The State provides censored and simplified information to its subjects. The narrative revolves around fireman Montag, whose job it is to burn books instead of putting out fires, in order to keep the subjects of the state from becoming unhappy by reading literature. Throughout the novel, the reader follows Montag in his meetings with secondary characters who, on the one hand, wish to keep him from changing, and on the other, to help him on his journey from good subject to enlightened individual. 6 Other than Henriette Wien’s 2012 Master’s thesis Claiming mastery of the word, on Fahrenheit 451 and 1984, few published works have focused on the power of discourse, but no research has dealt with the discursive function of the secondary characters. This essay will, therefore, be able to provide insight into facets that have received little previous attention. The study will argue that it is through the different discourses of hegemony, otherness and class struggle, as represented by secondary characters in the form of teachers and catalysts that the narrative develops. The theoretical framework is based on Althusserian and Gramscian ideas of ideology, interpellation and hegemony. Themes from Evrim Ersöz Koç’s 2015 article Subject and State: Ideology, State Apparatuses and Interpellation in Fahrenheit 451 and Jo Myers-Dickinson’s 1999 doctoral thesis Fashionable Straitjackets and Wooden Men which both discuss the State’s and its representatives’ actions will be expanded upon in the analysis. The analysis focuses on the following central questions: • How is discourse used to convince subjects in a totalitarian state of their function as subjects? • How does questioning hegemonic principles and discourses lead to free thought? • How are subordinate individuals able to rebel against the dominant ideology through being situated in different discourses? • How are the roles of teachers and catalysts functioning as primary driving-forces of change? The method of analysis will be based in part on Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis and in part on Teun van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Studies with a focus on discourse and power relations. Conclusions will be drawn using close reading, studying both linguistic features and their place in the sociocultural discourses present in the narrative. The structure of the essay is separated into several distinct sections. Following the introduction, there is a section covering the method and critical perspective. Thereafter the reader finds theoretical background on the concepts used as basis for the analysis of the primary text. Following is a short descriptive section on the secondary characters, which serves to give context to the analysis. 9 This view is shared by Fairclough, as his critical approach includes the notion that all communication includes three aspects at work simultaneously, namely: “(i) a language text, spoken or written, (ii) discourse practice (text production and text interpretation), (iii) sociocultural practice” (97). It is therefore imperative, when employing Fairclough’s approach to include in the analysis: Linguistic description of the language text, interpretation of the relationship between the (productive and interpretative) discursive processes and the text, and explanation of the relationship between the discursive processes and the social processes. (Fairclough 97) The communicative event is understood as a function of the discursive practices that are used in its interpretation, and it shapes those same practices, depending on the sociocultural genres the discourse is part of. The event, the setting, and the broader cultural sphere are all thus linked and cannot be separated in the analysis. 10 3. Althusser, state, ideology, and subject In the 1971 article Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, French philosopher Louis Althusser expands on Marxist theory concerning the state’s dominating ideology and class-struggle. He states that the classical Marxist understanding of there being “State power” and “State apparatus” (207) is insufficient, and that the latter should be divided into the Repressive and the Ideological State Apparatus. Where RSA contains government institutions such as the police and the courts, ISA is a plurality of entities such as the educational ISA, communications ISA, and cultural ISA. What separates the two State apparatuses, Althusser says, is that while RSA functions primarily through violence, ISAs function “massively and predominantly by ideology” (208). Together, the two State apparatuses form the basis of the dominating ideology, allowing the ruling class to exercise power over the citizens. The RSAs punish those who misbehave, and the ISAs create the ruling ideology which should be lived by all in a particular society. Althusser claims they are inseparable, that the one cannot function without the other (209). Furthermore, RSAs are always unified under a centralized command, be that the government or a representative thereof, but ISAs are instead “secured, usually in contradictory forms, by the ruling ideology” (208) since their very form is one of theory and thought, rather than a formalized institution. The fact that ISAs are diverse institutions of ideology, not concrete government functions, leads, according to Althusser, to ISAs being a site of class-struggle: […]because the resistance of the exploited classes is able to fund means and occasions to express itself there, either by the utilization of their contradictions, or by conquering combat positions in them in struggle (Althusser 209) It is much easier for those not in power to challenge the ruling set of ideas in those State apparatuses that are not unified and controlled by the rulers. It is, therefore, vital for the ruling ideology to be applied to the ISAs. Through such acts as “physical force” “administrative commands” and “open and tacit censorship” (210), via RSAs, the ruling class can control how the ISAs function. 11 The inverse is also of crucial importance. Althusser makes clear that the ruling ideology does not become that by itself. State power, and thus the very function of the RSA, must come from the realization of ideology. When it supersedes what formerly was, those old notions are pushed aside, and the new ideology becomes the ruling set of ideas. ISAs, therefore, enables the RSAs, while RSAs enable the upholding of the ruling ideology in ISAs. Through the ISAs, ideology creates, or “interpellates individuals as subjects” (216). A subject is someone who is accepted by the ideology as more than an individual. The good subjects live according to the dominant ideology, function in society, work “all right by themselves,” and “are inserted into practices governed by the rituals of the ISAs” (219). Althusser’s theory on interpellated subjects also includes the notion that in being a good subject, one “submits to a higher authority, and is therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission” (219). 14 5. Characters Having now devoted quite a bit of space to method and background, which to the reader might appear as part of a sociology-paper, what follows below is an introduction to the book’s secondary characters. These four are deemed the most important to the narrative’s development, as they all function as catalysts rather than bystanders. 5.1. Captain Beatty Captain Beatty, Montag’s boss, the fire chief, is undeniably the main antagonist of the narrative. He is a “disciplinary force that restores wayward gone firemen to ‘normalcy’” (Pundir 176). He sees that Montag is starting to question the hegemonic discourses set forth by the state, and he uses his extensive knowledge of both the historical and the contemporary society to bring Montag back into the fold. By quoting literature and explaining the firemen’s rules from a historical perspective his goal is to sterilize the “caught in-between” (Pundir 177) fireman. Michael LaBrie goes further in stating that Captain Beatty represents “a leader amongst the spoiled, superficial phonies” (26). He possesses a wealth of knowledge, which makes him an ideologue at work for the State ideology. 5.2. Clarisse Clarisse McClellan is the first catalyst; whose free-thinking personality makes Montag question the world he lives in. She is, according to herself, “seventeen and insane” (Bradbury 5). She is forced to see a psychiatrist because of her being “antisocial” (26) and “abnormal” (27). As her name suggests, her “effect on Montag is illuminating for sure” (Koç 123). Her family is equally misfit. Clarisse tells Montag about how her uncle has been arrested multiple times for doing things such as driving at moderate speed on the highway, and for being a “pedestrian” (7). The McClellan family spends its evenings having meaningful conversations, and Clarisse tells Montag how she likes to study people, sometimes riding the subway all day, listening to other people talk. Her conclusion, which Montag at first has a difficult time accepting, is that “People don’t talk about anything” (28). 15 From their first encounter, Clarisse starts Montag off on his journey of self-discovery by asking questions. Rafeeq McGiveron’s analysis states that Montag sees Clarisse as a mirror that reflects his insecurities and inexperience at him, but that, in actuality, it is Montag himself who “throws away the poorly fitting mask after Clarisse shows […] the truth underneath” (64). Koç elaborates by saying that it is because of Clarisse providing a reflection that Montag realizes his subjection to the ruling discourses. 5.3. Faber Faber, meanwhile, a college professor who does not believe the book as an entity is what is essential, but rather what it contains, how it “stitched the patches of the universe together” (Bradbury 79) into something that can be understood. Faber says he does not “talk things”, but rather “the meaning of things” (71). Montag comes to Faber’s house because he needs someone who will listen to him. Faber is a teacher who lets Montag know that he can, and does, think for himself. LaBrie explains how Faber is “portrayed in a cleverly placed juxtaposition in which Montag is displayed as a changing agent in a society full of travesties” (32). By not only telling truths to Montag, as Beatty does but instead allowing Montag to live, to feel what it is to think freely and to act per one’s wish, he teaches the fireman about freedom. 5.4. Granger Granger is the final teacher helping Montag transform into a person with real individual thought. He, too, is an academic who hides in the woods outside the city with his contingent of out-of-work college professors who all lost their employment when the liberal arts institutions were closed due to insufficient applicants. This group of avid readers has taken it upon themselves to preserve the contents of literature in their minds, having developed a method of photographically remembering texts. The people in Granger’s network are agents of counter-power (van Dijk) working to slowly overthrow the present ruling-class, in order to recreate a society that once was. 16 6. Analysis - Mapping characters and discourses 6.1. Orders of discourse This essay aims to study how discourses inside the novel, rather than those in the real world in the 1950s, affect the protagonist, it is thus of essence to establish which discourses are to be analyzed. It is, according to Fairclough, up to the researcher to carefully choose which discourses to study, and to do so consistently to make sure the results are viable. Marianne Jørgensen & Louise Phillips, on the other hand, explain how it is wise to see discourses as an analytical tool which is used to create “a framework for study” rather than something concrete which exists in reality (143). They say it is merely “a particular way of representing the world (143). As the goal is to explore the impact discourses have on subjects of a totalitarian state, it is beneficial first to touch upon the underlying orders of discourse which are central, but perhaps not overtly discussed in the analyses of those discourses represented by the secondary characters. All analyses will, however, need to have a base in these underlying ideas. Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel; therefore, the critical underlying discourses must be those of dystopian literature and the totalitarian state. For an authoritarian state, eliminating the will of the populace and the thought of the individual is of the utmost importance. This then creates dystopia, where free will and individual thought are not merely frowned upon, but outright banned. History is erased and replaced with a version that validates the leader(s). The dystopian state demands total allegiance of the citizens, and those who will not are eliminated. Here, Althusser’s interpellation is seen, when media outlets and other ISAs “spew[.] forth a continual flow of banalities designed to numb the mind and, thus, remove the threat of independent critical thought” (Myers- Dickinson 20). 19 As chief, it is Beatty’s responsibility to lead his subordinates back from wayward thinking, and he cannot do that with pushing more propaganda yet. He must serve Montag some truth in order to keep him living in the larger lie. Beatty’s long speech includes explanations of how it was through wanting to please everybody, combined with rapid technological development, that literature became irrelevant. Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click? Pic? Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought! (Bradbury 52) The hegemonic discourse includes here not only the State-sanctioned ‘truth’, but also Beatty’s interpretation of events. Blame is put on ISAs such as the media industry, not on the government. Linguistically, Beatty’s use of short words and repetitions show a sense of speed, most likely mimicking television’s rapid pace compared to literature. Adding to this a social science analysis, the reader learns that citizens are turned into Myers-Dickinson’s mass-man. Althusser’s passive subjects are created through the ruling class’ ideology being pushed onto them by ISAs, in the process of interpellation. Beatty continues by explaining how the culture industry removed everything that could be considered offensive by any minority group. “Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs…” (54). After having counted off a long list of groups, he tells Montag, “The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!” (55). Finally, he says: “Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals” (55). 20 Faber’s discourse, meanwhile, focuses on his responsibility for how things have changed. As he expresses shame for his part, he says: Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty’, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now, it’s too late (78) Faber has thus become a “role-player, insincere and often dishonest; a hypocrite who says and does what s/he must in order to survive” (Myers-Dickinson 30). He must endure in anonymity, fearing capture for being a dissident, even though he does nothing to anger the State. Fear is the light that keeps Faber alive. On hearing that Montag has a plan, he refuses to listen, arguing that it is “the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble” (81). Seeing the Bible, Faber reminisces over the feel of books, and he laments the fact that books were “let go” (78), and how Jesus has been turned into a “regular peppermint stick” and is “one of the ‘family’ now” (77), referring to how everything on television has been simplified. He says that TV “tells you what to think and blasts it in” (79) and that “It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest” (ibid). With books, on the other hand, “You can shut them, say, ‘Hold on a moment’ […] You play God to it” (80). Where Beatty, delivering the discourse of the State, says that books are wrong, since they are contradictory, Faber chooses to praise that same fact. “Books can be beaten down with reason” (80), and people should have “the right to carry out actions” (81) based on what they learn from reading. Here, Faber chooses to explain the power of books using the same vocabulary as the ruling ideology. Literature is robust thanks to its contradictory nature. It is not a weakness, but instead a strength that should be relished. It provides happiness through stimulating thought. 21 At the end of the second section of Fahrenheit 451, The Sieve and the Sand, Montag returns to the firehouse, where Beatty berates him over breaking the law by reading books. The chief quotes literature in his agitated lecture, trying to teach Montag a lesson. Faber, who listens through a communication device inside Montag’s ear, attempts to calm Montag down, saying that the Captain is baiting him. Just before the alarm sounds, Faber has a chance to speak freely to Montag. What he tells him prepares him for the coming events, and it functions as a steppingstone for Montag’s journey in the final section of the novel: All right, he’s had his say. You must take it in. I’ll say my say, too, in the next few hours. And you’ll take it in. And you’ll try to judge them and make your decision as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain’s. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you now to know with which ear you’ll listen (104) The insanity of trying to fool the Government is commented on by Granger. He explains how the televised hunt of Montag, which reaches its end when the mechanical Hound kills a stand-in who has been put in place of Montag, to give the audience the end they expect. “They’re faking” (141), he says, “They can’t admit it” (141). The hegemonic ideological discourse that says the State is never wrong must be upheld, despite the real Montag avoiding arrest. In that the State proclaiming that “a crime against society has been avenged” (142), the ideological discourse is again reproduced through “defamation campaigns” and the silencing of those deemed radical (van Dijk 37). 24 The state keeps records of these Others. One of them is Clarisse McClellan, whom Beatty calls an “odd duck”, a “time bomb” (57), and a “queer one” (58), clearly focusing on how she is different in a negative way. Her family is called “anti-social” (57), despite them choosing to discuss as a family rather than watching television each evening. Clarisse herself mirrors what Beatty says about school’s mission to “chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed” (58), but she explains school as “to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk […] An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball […] another hour of transcription history […] but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don’t; they just run the answers at you, bing bing bing…” (27). Clarisse has seen through the school ISA, she compares it to a funnel, and ‘them’ “telling us it’s wine when it’s not” (27). As she prefers being with people and talking, she is indeed an Other, someone who does not live by the standard rules of society, someone who is eventually eliminated. Granger, too, is an Other. His group is a part of a significant network of many thousands, spread throughout the country (143), and everyone in this loosely connected fringe-society has agreed to bear information that was once found in libraries. “Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it” (142), he says. Having tried many other methods and found them not to be as efficient, the book-readers concluded that the safest way to keep the knowledge from being discovered and destroyed is to internalize it. Their Otherness stems not from them being resistive, like Clarisse, but from their knowledge. Van Dijk means that while the dominant groups of society, the “symbolic elite” (32) do have access to the greatest discursive power, thanks to them either being part of the ruling class or because of their support to those in power, academics, too, possess “counter-power” (33). Granger’s network has, thus far, chosen to work in the dark, gathering strength, while at the same time staying out of harm’s way. “A few crackpots with verses in their heads can’t touch them” (147) he comments on why the State left them alone, after having explained that their goal is to rebuild what was before. This shows how Granger feels the State has underestimated the revolutionary capabilities of the book-reader network. 25 Otherness as “us vs them” (Myers-Dickinson 63), combined with hegemony as interpellation through discourse (Fairclough 76) is seen at the end of the novel’s second part, when Beatty lectures Montag. “[T]he crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold” (102), “Stick with the fireman, Montag. All else is dreary chaos” (102) both show that Beatty feels that he can return his subordinate to the hegemonically ideal ways by establishing that what is other is comparable to an animal or too chaotic to endure. What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And at the very end of my dream, along I came with the Salamander and said, Going my way? And you got in and we drove back to the firehouse in beatific silence, all dwindled away to peace (Bradbury 104) In the above quote, Beatty is recounting a dream he had. The language he employs is rather literary, in an effort to teach Montag about the duplicity of books. His phrasing, too, is not like how he spoke before. He wants Montag to understand that what Beatty represents is right and righteous, and that what Montag has been searching for recently is not worth pursuing. Thus, it shows a discursive attempt to rescue a lost soul, someone who is on the brink of becoming a “designated other” (Myers-Dickinson 32). As Beatty is an agent of the state and a foreman, he has a responsibility to uphold discipline among his subordinates, and he does so through showing sympathy whilst still employing scare-tactics. 26 6.4. Class-struggle According to Althusserian theory, class-struggle is the process in which those ruled over fight to gain counter-power. Fairclough, meanwhile, means that there is a transformation through “discoursal change” (78), where there is “transgression [and] crossing boundaries” (78) for those who partake in the struggle. In Fahrenheit 451, This act of acquiring counter-power, or the struggle to find meaning is portrayed as a coming-of-age or coming-to-terms with life for the protagonist, Guy Montag. His internal struggle concerns moving from an Althusserian good subject to an individual capable of free thought. His journey begins with Faber opening his mind to the importance of looking beyond what he has been taught his entire life, that it is the books themselves that are bad, and instead realizing that it is what we learn from books that matters. Faber says that books “show the pores in the face of life” (79), that books provide us with time to think, and that we have the free will to act upon what we have thought. It is therefore imperative that Montag, in his struggles, looks beyond the mere physical object the book is, and starts reflecting on what the contents of books mean to him. Granger tells Montag that strength is in numbers. “When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage” (143). Now, they call themselves “model citizens” (143), not angering anyone, in fear of being imprisoned or killed, and subsequently losing the stored information. Having been part of the majority of hard-working individuals, they became “disenfranchised” (Myers-Dickinson 26) when their jobs became superfluous as colleges began losing students. Instead of turning to revolution immediately, they instead wait for the inevitable nuclear war to start, opting to spend their time amassing like-minded people who are willing to work towards a change. 29 Beatty’s utterances on minorities require some consideration. On the surface, it is indeed possible to understand them as belonging to the same hegemonic discourse as his other statements. Further study, however, reveals an ulterior motive that requires seeing the non-discursive elements of Beatty’s lecture. As Fairclough states, the element of sociocultural practice in all communicative events needs to be considered, as well as the relationship between the text (here, the utterance) and the discursive practice (here, Beatty’s role as ideologue). It seems that the Fire chief is not entirely happy with his position or the truth of how the country operates. While it is unlikely that Montag understands it, the reader sees that Beatty is ironic. He does not agree with the system. Instead, he is someone who has been aware of the State presenting lies as truth. It is indeed therefore he fails to bring Montag back into the fold, instead helping the other man to rebel further. While he wishes to be a good agent for society, he is not truly a true believer, thus making his efforts lacking in conviction. The counter-power exists in the forms of Clarisse, the catalyst, Faber, the teacher, and Granger, the ideologue for the revolutionary party. Without Clarisse asking Montag if he is happy, he would never have started on his path of questioning the ruling class’ discourse. Being a free spirit who does not conform to societal norms allows her to think in ways Montag had not considered. In her, he sees an individual who has chosen to live not according to what the State says, but instead as someone who is not afraid to question hegemony. Had Montag never met Faber, who told him that it is what is contained in books, and what we do with what we learn from books that is important, he would not have had the tools to understand his thoughts. Faber explains the social conditions that ruled during previous times, when society underwent change and how he himself, like others, did nothing to halt it. Owning up to his own faults, and teaching Montag how to avoid the same mistakes, Faber gives Montag a sense of there being a solution to his feelings of inadequacy. Granger, using his vast knowledge, transforms Montag, who can arguably been seen as Tabula rasa, in that he states he has nothing to offer, that he does not belong with them into someone who can finally remember where he and his wife first met, proving that he has (re)acquired thought. Granger then invites Montag to join his group, and together, they move towards a future in which they hope to change the world. 30 It is also worth considering that what the secondary characters in Fahrenheit 451 do, is quite the reverse of Althusserian interpellation. Instead of an all-ruling state, with limitless resources to put towards RSAs and ISAs developing and maintaining a reigning societal discourse, this novel presents the reader with a narrative in which catalysts and teachers, most of them without any real power, provide explanations about society and teaches the protagonist about himself and the world he lives in, which then leads to the protagonist’s emancipation. Using CDA as a method of analysis has shown to be quite successful, as the underlying ideological message could be brought forward as part of the linguistic analysis. As this novel is set in a totalitarian future, there are obvious political meaning to most everything uttered. CDA, therefore, with its critical component, aimed at uncovering power abuse functions well as a tool for understanding the communicative events. This is especially true when combined with Althusser’s and Gramsci’s theory’s, although these are not very recent. There is, however, no reason to doubt their validity, as they, like CDA, are aimed at highlighting the struggle of those not in power, which is what this novel is about. Despite Fahrenheit 451 having been quite thoroughly studied by scholars through the decades, I feel there is still room for further review within the area of cultural studies. Looking at ideological hegemony and discourse as power in the narrative, but not from a Marxist perspective could provide new perspectives not considered fully before. 31 8. Works Cited Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation)” Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. Monthly Review P. 1971, pp.127-86. Bates, Thomas R. “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony.” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 36, no. 2, 1975, p. 351–366. Doi 10.2307/2708933 Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Koç, Evrim Ersöz. “Subject and State: Ideology, State Apparatuses and Interpellation in ‘Fahrenheit 451.’” Belgrade English Language and Literature Studies, vol. 7, 2015, pp. 107–133. Doi 10.18485/bells.2015.7.6 Fairclough, Norman. Critical Discourse Analysis. Longman, 1995. Jørgensen, Marianne, and Louise Phillips. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage, 2011. LaBrie, Michael R. “Now Was Then, Then Is Now: The Paradoxical World of Fahrenheit 451”. Pell Scholars and Senior Theses. Paper 55. 2010. https://digitalcommons.salve.edu/pell_theses/55/ Mcgiveron, Rafeeq O. “‘To Build a Mirror Factory’: The Mirror and Self-Examination in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 39, no. 3, 1998, pp. 282–287. Doi 10.1080/00111619809599536 Myers-Dickinson, Jo. Fashionable Straitjackets and Wooden Men: The Creation and Maintenance of the Moi Commun and the Totalitarian State in Dystopian Literature. The University of Toledo. 1999. OED: Oxford English Dictionary. The Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. www.oed.co.uk. Accessed November 5, 2019 Pundir, Abhishek. A Foucaldian Study of Power Structures in Fahrenheit 451. Literary Herald. Vol. 3. Issue 1. June 2017. http://tlhjournal.com/uploads/products/27.abhishek-pundir-article.pdf van Dijk, Teun. Discourse and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Wien, Henriette, “Claiming mastery of the word. The power of discourse in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984”. University of Tromsø, 2012. https://hdl.handle.net/10037/4848