Fahrenheit 451: How Montag is Convinced to Change His Mind about Books Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is an outlandish novel based on the government brainwashing the United States to prevent the people from thinking for themselves. The government has given the people seashells to put in their ears, that play music all day. The seashells are one of the government's attempts to keep the people from thinking. Bradbury describes the society shown within the novel in a way that would draw a mind picture of robots. David Mogen describes it as an "entrapment in a sterile and poisonous culture cut o