Effect Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

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Imagine the world without books and knowledge. What will be the effect of censorship? In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses characterization of Beatty, Mildred, and Faber and the setting to show censorship limits people’s thinking and it has a negative effect on people’s life. Bradbury uses the characterization of Beatty to show censorship leads to people stop from questioning and thinking about problems. When Faber is talking to Montag about the society, he mentioned, “Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learned from the interaction of the first two”(84-85). Books are where When Montag and Mildred is talking before captain Beatty comes, Mildred mentions, “My family is people, they tell me things: I laugh, they laugh! And the colors”(73). The author specifically uses the word people because it shows that Mildred thinks TV characters are real people. She even consider them as her family. The quote shows how people will be like after censorship. When Mildred relies so much on technology, she won’t be able to think on her own. In addition, when the author writes about school, “The old man admitted to being a retired English professor who had been thrown out upon the world forty years ago when the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage”(75). Following with the censorship of books, colleges are shut down because no one wants to go to college. In schools, students do a lot of critical thinking, without colleges they are not going to do as much critical thinking. Plus, other school such as elementary schools, students don’t actually learn. What they do have fun and play sports. In the previous paragraph, people came out to be athletes instead of thinkers. This all happens after the banning of books. Overall, through characterization and setting censorship has a negative effect on people’s life and it limits people’s thinking. With censorship people will not be able to progress and develop. In real life, if people give up on knowledge and books, technology

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