Fahrenheit 451 Censorship
Censorship and Its Effects in Fahrenheit 451 Censorship and its effects are the heart of Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451. In the novel we learn of a future world that seems quite possible given the way the world is today. Author Bradbury shows how the banning of books, and thus free thought, can have dramatic and disastrous effects on society. He especially highlights how the government controls how people think and feel. The books in Fahrenheit 451were banned for several reasons. First off, many books were banned because they weren't politically correct. "Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. Serenity Montag. Peace Montag" (Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 59).If one group of people, no matter how small, didn't like a book, it would be banned. This is already starting to happen today. For example, many schools are banning the Harry Potter books because Christians don't like the "satanic" messages in them. Jack Zipes states that this contrasts Bradbury's views. He claims that Bradbury believes that the books are heroes and that
They knew what was going on, but thought it was a good thing. All this censorship and decline of thought affected people in different ways. Sisario says that the government considered Clarisse to be a time bomb, because she was an observant person who questioned society (Sisario 203). Killing increases greatly among youth. Of course, Hitler and the Nazis also engaged in book burning. And the three dimensional sex magazines of course" (Bradbury 57-58). Therefore, as people stopped losing interest in reading books, it became easier for the government to begin to mold them into what they believed was the perfect citizen. In the novel, Captain Beatty calls the firemen "peace-keepers"; they protect our right to have peace of mind (Bradbury 58-59). All they care about is physical pleasure and what is going to be on TV that night. It is a society where the government has god-like power, and the people are just pawns. It is a society that most people would not want to live in. By giving the people what they want they are less likely to revolt. There is another symbol in addition to the salamander mentioned earlier: the phoenix. It can be said that this is Bradbury's way of telling readers that books are useful when having a discussion, and that the more you read the better you will end up in an argument.
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