Subject and State: Ideology, State Apparatuses and Interpellation in "Fahrenheit 451"

Abstract

In Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Ray Bradbury portrays an authoritarian social formation in which reading and keeping books are strictly forbidden. The protagonist Montag who works as a fireman charged for burning books happens to question both his job and the dominant anti-intellectual ideology. Following a crisis of conscience period, Montag challenges the function of repressive state apparatus and manages to flee to wilderness where he meets a group of men who are willing to reconstruct society by enabling people to learn about their cultural heritage through the books they have secretly memorized. Using Althusser's theory on ideology, this paper reinterprets Bradbury's imaginative society scrutinizing the use of state apparatuses to interpellate subjects by the ruling ideology and the motif of resistance to such a powerful disseminating ideological call.