Fahrenheit 451 Book Report Essay

Fahrenheit 451

Introduction

How would it be to live in a society where it is normal for firemen to burn books? Where all the books were illegal? The author Ray bradbury named his science fiction book Fahrenheit 451, for this is the temperature at which paper burns. Bradbury’s main character, Guy Montag is a fireman, meaning he burns books. In this society this is a normal thing. All books are illegal because books represent freedom of speech and intelligence. The government would rather be in control, and with books they can’t do that, they can’t control PEOPLE. Books have knowledge and with knowledge comes opinions. If the government gave the society books, then they, the government, would have to take everyone's opinion and everyone’s knowledge. The books getting burned by the firemen represent censorship. The firemen burn the books that people aren’t supposed to have, this is all for the government to keep being in control. They know people have books because they are reported by neighbors, family, or friends. People have it drilled into their minds that books

are pretty much evil. But they aren’t, the government is..In Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury is putting into context Freedom of speech vs. Censorship, showing us that our world has more or less of each.

Body Paragraphs
"An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports,..we never ask questions, or at least most of us don't; they just run the answer at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher."(Bradbury, pg98) In this quote Bradbury is criticizing society by showing how the children get educated.

When they “learn”, they are learning only the answers to problems, not being allowed to ask questions or work for anything on their own. In our world today people use books as a resource to learn or for pleasure, no one thinks of it as a source of dangerous thoughts as in Bradbury’s book. It is bad if our society today were to learn not being allowed to voice our opinions because society should be able to ask questions and get the answers ourselves and learn from the mistakes we have

made.
Bradbury demonstrates censorship in this quote, showing how censorship happened because of society."The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said.”(Bradbury, pg 55) The government did not choose the controlling environment, society did. Society wanted to increase the pace of everything, they wanted to speed up the process and not really have to work for anything, not have to think for themselves. They wanted an easier way to get things handed to them and this was it.
This quote is representing freedom of speech, Bradbury is showing how when they did have freedom of speech in this society no one decided to use it and they let it go to waste."I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up... And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the, firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then.” said Faber (Bradbury, pg 78). Bradbury’s character Faber had a chance to help stop the government taking over losing their freedom of speech. Bradbury is trying to explain that we have a right to say anything and not to hold back from our freedom to speak.