Censorship Quotes In Fahrenheit 451

people were not allowed to act on their beliefs, instead their thoughts and actions were controlled
In Fahrenheit 451, the government exercised censorship supposedly for the purpose of happiness. Through technology and media, the government was able to eliminate individuality by manipulating the mind of the people into believing the propaganda of what happiness is. The people’s ignorance made them obediently abide that they failed to realize how far technology and the media have taken control of their minds. The free thought of characters such as Montag and Clarisse collided with that of Captain Beatty, who strongly believe in and enforce the censorship, and the firemen, whose role was to burn illegal books; these clashes were Bradbury’s way

of creating conflicts of man versus man and man versus society to show the negative impacts of government censorship. Contrary to the government’s mission of maintaining a happy society, hindering individuality only lead to discontent and even violence. For instance, when Montag was exposed as a criminal for possessing books, he murdered Captain Beatty by burning him to protect his individuality and prevent Captain Beatty from hunting down Faber.
Bradbury used symbolism to reveal the magnitude of damaged minds overruled by technology and media in a dystopian society in Fahrenheit 451. In Fahrenheit 451, the government heavily censored the media and technology; the people lost interest in reading books nor engaged in conversations with others. Instead, the people were infatuated with technology such as the radio and parlor walls. To expose the emptiness within the society, Bradbury depicts the parlor wall as “empty and tray-looking without its walls lit with orange and yellow confetti and skyrockets and women in gold-mesh dresses and men in black velvet pulling one-hundred-pound rabbits from silver hats. The parlor was dead and Mildred kept peering in at it with a blank expression” (Bradbury 67). Mildred’s world evolves around the walls and her reaction was evident she was upset when the wall was turned off. Mildred’s infatuation with the parlor walls are further supported when she referred to the people on the walls, not Montag, as her “family” (Bradbury 73). Bradbury used the parlor walls as a symbol of the emptiness and lack of interactions or relationships among the people as demonstrated between the relationship of Montag and Mildred. Montag and Mildred’s lacking relationship became clear when the parlor walls were turned off and they became distance instead of engaging with each other.
In Fahrenheit 451, in the media, television programs are meant to maintain the status quo. The television programs do not provoke the reasoning of the viewer but instead provide a meaningless form of entertainments, a form of broadcasting suggesting the authorities are trying to prevent viewers from having an opportunity to become cognitive. The result is people follow the government blindly because there are no other alternatives of information to support their claims. For instance during the manhunt of Montage, to avoid humiliation and demonstrate the power of the authority, the authority used another innocent man as a scapegoat and executed him as Montag on national television when in the real sense Montag had already escaped them. This incident show how government propaganda is being used to control society and distort the truth; hence farther enforce his theme of censorship. Beside using mass media and banning books to control people, the government implemented a school system in anaesthetizing children’s minds instead of providing them with a proper education nor is the school conducive to proper social behavior. The students do not interact nor engage in fruitful conversation. As reveled by Clarisse, she is not in school because the school considered her as being antisocial, but in irony, Clarisse wanted to engage in conversations with her classmates and talk about the world, but those actions do not follow the pattern of the school, so she was out casted. The school’s academic consists of TV class, sports, transcription of history and the students do not ask questions but are given answers instead (Bradbury 27). Since there is no form of socialization and the students are so exhausted after school they either go to bed or head to Fun Park to engage in activities which lead them to crimes or killing each other. Bradbury used the school system to portray how censorship has affected the adolescences in Fahrenheit 451 who are the next generation, a generation that is not promising for the welfare of the society’s future.
In Fahrenheit 451, the people are made to believe books brainwash them.

At one point, in a conversation with Montag, Captain Beatty spoke about Clarisse and stated because of what Clarisse had been taught in her home environment, she had become distant to the rules in school, and as stated by Captain Beatty, “she didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing” and was better off dead (Bradbury 57). The real aim is to brainwash the minds of the people only to be receptive to books supporting the regime such as rule books. The same way in real life the American government censors some materials especially during the time of wars to prevent the public from looking from the point of view of the other party in the war. The American government conducted press censorship during wartime; case in point, according to “Censorship in the United States,” is when antiwar journalists during World War I was arrested. In Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty explained censorship was not a government directive, but rather it was the people. Captain Beatty tells Montag if a group of people (minorities) no matter how small disliked the book, the book had to be banned. The same way small groups of people influencing the censorship of books in the Fahrenheit 451 is the same way today’s world works which are the corporations and nongovernmental organizations who pass the contemporary

censorship.
Fahrenheit 451 is an image of the crisis that threatens the American society. For instance, the Cold War, Korean War as well as the invention of television contributed in a