Many things come to mind when the word "censorship" is involved. The Merriam Webster Dictionary states that censorship is stopping the transmission or publication of matter considered objectionable. In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, censorship plays an enormous role and is noted to be the most important theme. Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 has a major effect on the society's knowledge and characteristics in the novel.
             In the futuristic world Bradbury has created in the science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, firemen start fires rather than extinguishing them. People of this society do not think independently nor do they have meaningful conversations. They don't even have an interest in reading books. Rather than that, they watch an extreme amount of television on wall-size sets and listen to "Sea-shell radio" which is attached to their ears. People drive extremely fast due to lack of appreciation for nature. "It was a pleasure to burn." So goes the opening sentence of the Bradbury's story. It grabs the reader's attention and immediately tells where the unfortunate hero, Guy Montag, stands on the idea of book burning. Being the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 Montag is by no means a perfect hero. Montag's faith in his profession and his society begins to decline almost immediately after the novel's opening passage. Montag comes across a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the dark emptiness of his life with her innocent questions and unusual love for people and nature. Being faced with the complication of books for the first time, Montag is often frustrated, confused, and overwhelmed. He is often rash, unclear, self-obsessed, and too easily influenced. At times he is not even aware of why he does things, feeling that his hands...