I just finished the first chapter:
"There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone."
If I had to pick one line that summarizes the theme of the first chapter that would be it. That idea shows up so many times, and I think Bradbury is so friggin' good at capturing that isolation between these characters, especially (and most poignantly) between Montag in his wife. I felt so sad reading about their relationship, especially how she's quite literally walled off from the real world via her little Seashells, and how she just sort of floats in her "electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk, and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind." And what's astonishing is that you see Millies everywhere! Just look around you: how any people do you see wearing earbuds or noise-canceling headphones while they go about the must mundane of tasks? TikTok. Instagram. Facebook. Youtube. Mustn't let our minds idle for even a second lest we become unhappy! And that point is made crushingly clear by Beatty near the end of the chapter.
"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred."
I was floored by that line because of how prescient it was, especially coming from someone writing in the 1950s. I mean, racial connotations aside, if you take "minorities" to mean "differences" (be it in opinions, politics, sex, sports, you name it), it's pretty astounding how the world has more or less become exactly what Beatty is describing. Everything is niche. And because there are so many niches, they must all be amalgamated. Otherwise there'll be unhappy people. The problem with that is that all that accumulated weight will eventually cause the culture to bottom out! So what you do? Just BURN it. All of it. This way there are no more differences. "We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal (...) but everyone made equal (...) then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against."
