The majority of society abides by the spoken and unspoken laws which outline the fabric of what it means to be normal. Throughout history, there have been those who challenge these social expectations and condemn them for the constricting limits that they really are. Though works of fiction, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a science fiction account of the future of society, and Cory Doctorow's response to George Orwell's 1984, titled Little Brother, both portray the very real risks of allowing any governing power to gain too much control over the lives of the people it leads. Bradbury's novel is set years into the future, following Guy Montag's transition from a pawn of society into an independent mind. Doctorow applies the faults and lessons from Orwell's 1984 to current society and presents this from the perspective of a passionate youth named Marcus Yallow who is fighting to reclaim his rights after a panicked response by the government results in the automatic suspicion that speaking out equates to terrorism. For all of their differences, though, the texts have as much in common. Both portray individuals breaking free of the confines of social expectations and are geared towards exposing the heart of society's problems, lessons that extend beyond the books into current society. It is because of this that these works are so prolific. The products of Bradbury, Doctorow and modern society reveal parallel cultures in which people have learned that they have the power to make the changes they want for their society, yet they also demonstrate society's failure to accept that it can never reach a state of perfection; in this way, society is digging its own grave by creating a world in which people are constantly striving for unachievable goals and fighting wars with no resolutions until it is overwhelmed and on the verge of collapse.