In Fahrenheit 451 familial and societal love is non-existent. Because people do not care about one another, crimes are performed for fun or to keep control over the masses. We see children and the government commit horrible crimes in Fahrenheit 451. They commit these crimes because they have never been taught love for their fellow human. In works like Shakespeare, people are taught about love and the power of love, but this society does not have this kind of knowledge which causes the crime. When knowledge is taken away, people never learn to love and that is the most prevalent theme in Bradbury’s novel.

Mildred’s friends come over to watch television. In this scene we learn about what the regular society thinks. One of the friends claims to have had twelve abortions and still has at least one child. With this child, she either sends them to school or locks them in the television room alone. This shows that parents do not love their children. Even though a child grew and came out of this woman‘s body, she did not love what she made. This could also relate to how the society does not think for themselves. Since she made something, a human being, her action could be frowned upon by society because it is something original. This could give her a reason not to love her child because she has been taught that anything original and worth thinking about is horrible and not tolerated by the government. This shows that government control starts with the fetus because even the parents do not love them so the saying of a face only a mother could love does not apply in this situation and means that nobody could ever love anybody else.

Beatty represents the government and the control it has over society. Beatty has read the great works of Shakespeare and recites some lines to Montag. When Beatty first finds out that Montag is fascinated with books, he gives Montag multiple chances to confess. This shows Beatty cared for Montag and had some love for him. Since Beatty was able to read and learn the works from shakespeare, he learned about love and forgiveness even if he did it unconsciously. This shows that when people do read about love they learn about it and use it in their everyday lives even if they do not fully understand the meaning of it.

Montag represents how people learn to love. He goes from smiling about burning books because it brought him joy to hiding the books and risking his life for them. When Montag starts reading, he slowly starts developing relationships. His first love is Faber. Faber teaches him that he should read and learn. His second love is of books. After understanding the meaning given in books, Montag sees that he has to protect the books with everything he has. By joining the group of people that memorize books, Montag shows that he will put the books before himself and make sure that it out lives him because he does  not want to live without it which is one of the true meanings of love that we have seen in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with the scene of the two lovers killing themselves because they do not want to live without the other.

Love represents a universal theme prevalent in everything we see around us. When love is taken, society falls into a rut that it cannot get out of because it does not have people caring enough about others to help them. We are seeing our own society fall into this rut with all of the terror attacks and school shootings. For example, the child that decided shooting up a school would be fun had violent tendencies before that day, but nobody at the school or the people around him out of the school cared enough to find out why he was violent. Those people did not have enough love for their fellow man to see what was wrong and lend a helping hand. This is probably because of the current downfall of books and the rise of technology that are mindless and teach nothing. Society is leaving the age of books in our generation so we need to find a new way to learn to love or else before we know it, we could never have stories like Fahrenheit 451 to read anymore.