In the book Fahrenheit 451, books are strictly outlawed, and if someone is found owning a book, the house of the owner is to be burned down. This form of condemnation of the society is an extreme version of censorship. Censorship is defined as “the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good.” (Anastaplo) Recently, this concept has taken on a large role in many school systems across the country. School boards have been banning a number of books from their criteria in order to prevent offensive material from reaching their students. However, the good intentions of these teachers may be having the opposite effect that they were hoping for. In his book Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury demonstrates the adverse effects that censorship can have on a society. Censorship, when not used correctly, can retain a quantity of negative effects on high school students.
An abounding amount of classic titles is being removed from teaching criteria and school libraries in fear of vexing someone. “Many professional educational organizations and individual school systems have articulated the principles that should ideally govern selection and retention of materials.” (NCAC) The guidelines for removing these books from the school are typically for obtaining abhorrent material.
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members don’t realize that one student may find something offensive, whereas another does not. Many of the classic titles that are banned, for these reasons, have important life lessons that students will miss out on if they are banned. Most censorship is “fear-driven” because schools do not want angry parents to come after them when they find out the story their child is reading, has some information they do not believe their child should be reading (Anderson 109). This fear has cost students all across the country to lose meaningful knowledge that could ultimately be beneficial to them. The fear is understandable, but when looking at censorship and all the students missing out on valuable information, it becomes less and less tolerable. When books are removed from teaching criteria, the valuable history found in the texts are lost. Through these stories, students are able to get a deeper understanding of history by connecting with the characters due to seeing history on a more profound and personal level. It gives a more detailed look at history through personal experiences, rather than the experiences of a population at large. Without this intricate information, students are missing out on having a tighter grasp of the past. The books that are being banned can also give special insight to different perspectives on certain topics of interest. “Every time a book is banned, students lose the chance to obtain important information and views on certain topics.” (Blume) Having no views on opinions or topics, students now have nothing to base their own opinions on. This can ultimately lead to the loss of ability for a student to think independently. They will not have the knowledge to be able to base their own ideas from. Other people’s ideas often help spark new ideas in someone else. As a result of censorship, students are not able to read books that would give them these ideas and opinions, ceasing their chances to come up with their own interpretations. Whether mentally or verbally, reading often leads to people asking questions.
When people ask questions they tend to research and analyze until they can come up with an answer. Verbal questioning interests others, resulting in more inquiring and evaluating when the others begin asking questions of their own. In Fahrenheit 451, books are strictly outlawed. Due to the censorship and lack of scrutinizing, not a lot of people had the ability to think critically. Critical thinking skills are often gained through practice. If one does not probe and investigate to find an answer, they will never develop these important critical thinking
skills. “Reading and discussing books is one of the most effective ways to get teens to think through and learn about the challenges of adolescence.” (Anderson 109) With every book that a school bans, students lose another opportunity to further their education. Teenagers will be blinded to solutions to problems that the books could otherwise teach them. They will no longer be able to feel better when they read about someone else going through the same difficult situation that they are in. Schools will lack in their education and will have less opportunities for growth amongst their students. If schools remain banning these classic pieces of literature, students will never have the chance to expand their intelligence. When censorship is not used in the correct manner, it can be more destructive than it is helpful. Instead of banning all offensive literature, resulting in many negative outcomes, a more appropriate approach to censorship would be giving students age-appropriate materials. Some grade school students should not be reading some of the titles that high school students are reading. Likewise, there are a few books that are not appropriate for high school students as well. School boards should not ban every book that they think might offend someone. There would be nothing left to read. Censorship limits another student’s chance to be educated. In Fahrenheit 451, the main character Montag goes to a man named Faber’s house to receive help. After arriving, Faber tells Montag “It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books,” implying that books are necessary for retaining important knowledge (Bradbury 82).
“It was a pleasure to burn,”(3) that was the idea Ray Bradbury was trying to get across in the novel Fahrenheit 451. This novel takes place in the future, where governments only law is to burn books. In this novel, you will see how Bradbury explains the life of Guy Montag, a fireman who burns houses for a living. However one day he burns a house with a woman in who is willing to die for her books, this made Montag have the urge to steal a book. The stealing of the book is what lead him to believe society is lead by censorship. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury shows us a world in the future, in which free thought is controlled through censorship, which leads to an ignorant, insensitive, and non independent society.
Imagine living in a world where everything everyone is the same. How would you feel if you were not able to know important matters? Being distracted with technology in order to not feel fear or getting upset. Just like in this society, the real world, where people have their faces glued to their screen. Also the children in this generation, they are mostly using video games, tablets, and phones instead of going outside and being creative with one another. Well in Fahrenheit 451 their society was just like that, dull and conformity all around. But yet the people believed they were “happy” the way things were, just watching TV, not thinking outside the box.
Is too much technology taking over our brains to the point where knowledge is not given any place? Ray Bradbury author of Fahrenheit 451 gives a great example of censorship in their society. To summarize Montag is a middle aged fireman who is portrayed as a man who is forced to follow the orders of the government by burning books. First, the society experiences rejection towards books because the government has made them illegal. Then the lack of books affects education because people cannot make decisions for themselves. Lastly, the absence of books in the society has affected humanity because the citizens are suffering depression. Ray Bradbury’s
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses the theme censorship. In today’s society the government censors almost everything, from social media pages, to text messages in one’s personal cell phones. In Fahrenheit 451 the “Firemen”, in the story are a direct reflection of our current government. In order to control the people’s knowledge and self-thinking the “Firemen” destroy the books. The same control the “Firemen” seek to have is the same type of control our government seek. Montag is the “Fireman” that began to wonder why they were burning the books. There had to be something extremely detrimental in the books for them to need to be burned.
People nowadays have lost interest in books because they see it as a waste of time and useless effort, and they are losing their critical thinking, understanding of things around them, and knowledge. Brown says that Bradbury suggests that a world without books is a world without imagination and its ability to find happiness. The people in Fahrenheit 451 are afraid to read books because of the emotions that they will receive by reading them and claim them as dangerous. Bradbury hopes to reinstate the importance of books to the people so that they can regain their “vital organ of thinking.” In Fahrenheit 451, Montag steals a book when his hands act of their own accord in the burning house, regaining his ability to read and think on his own (Bradbury 34-35; Brown 2-4; Lee 3; Patai 1, 3).
Ray Bradbury, one of America’s most renowned 20th century writers once said, “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture, just get people to stop reading them” (Bradbury). In today’s society books are not burned, but some are being censored thus preventing people from enjoying the books they want to read. So what is censorship? Censorship is when an individual or an organization wants to restrict or limit access of a book to readers to avoid offending a group of people. Censorship has affected classrooms and public libraries across the nation due to people like parents, teachers and sometimes students themselves protesting against certain types of books. There is hardly a week that goes by that a book is challenged to be censored. The most common reason why a book is censored is for “violence, sex, race, Encouragement of "Damaging" Lifestyles, witchcraft, and political bias” (Butler University).
Something else that must be mentioned in order to understand the evils of school censorship are facts censors ignore; the first being literary quality. When they chose to censor a book they do not take into account the educational value of the book. How can one say a book does not belong in schools if they do not know what lessons it teaches? The second key element ignored is the manner in which teachers lead students to interact with texts. They g...
Censorship is a shroud for the intolerable, a withdrawal from the cold truths of humanity, and ultimately, the suppression of expression. When a book such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is banned in classrooms, students are not only stripped of an enriching work of literature, but also consequently stripped of the cultural and moral awareness required to survive in a world stained with imperfection and strewn with atrocity.
Allowing for censorship to take part in any society is a domino effect that one-by-one removes all of its citizen’s rights and freedoms. In both societies, Bradbury’s and Fahrenheit 451, the government takes the driver’s seat and regulates what info the citizens can and will receive. Not only us this limiting the amount of knowledge learned, but is also puts all the power into selective and few hands. Lifeless and powerless, citizens are falling victim as the government controls them like puppeteers. All this control by censorship will eventually lead to a totalitarian nation. In Fahrenheit 451 the main character Guy Montag lives within this constrained world. Their main source for freedom of knowledge and creativity is through books. However, that gateway is roped off by censorship, making all books illegal. The government would rather just burn the books and give society all the information they need rather than producing a two sided way that offers a choice (76). In this dystopian society people are only being fed certain information. This becomes problematic for Montag because he was never an ordinary man. His free thinking form of intelligence quickly sets him apart from his peers. His wife Mildred on the other hand is a perfect example of one of the government’s puppets. Like the rest of society, Mildred is vacant inside and has no capability for any emotions or reason. “We need not to be let alone. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” (52) Here Montag directly addresses Mildred’s problem of avoiding all conflicts that would make for an intellectual being. This is because Mildred can always be found glued to the couch spending time with her family. Building dumb pe...
“It was a pleasure to burn” (Montag 1). To burn what? Something you don’t think has any purpose or importance in people’s lives? The story never gave a clear explanation on why books are banned, this is called censorship. Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc, and suppressing unacceptable parts. When I hear the word censorship I think of something being blocked out.
Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451 lived in a time where censorship happened perpetually. He showed a dystopian, authoritarian and futuristic society where censorship was a regular action taken by the government. This mirrored the changing times happening in mid 1900’s. To continue, he shows how this can affect characters in his book, such as Mildred, Beatty, Clarisse and Guy. To add on, he exhibits how different and numb civilization can be with extreme suppression. Ray Bradbury explored the negative idea of censorship on humans and society with his book, Fahrenheit 451 while proving his point are still relevant in today’s civilization.
Fahrenheit 451 is an extraordinary novel written by Ray Bradbury, and is considered to be one of his best works. This well-known classic is a dystopian piece of work, which means that it is a futuristic, fictional, and other worldy society that the people are living in, and they are suffering through a great tragedy. One might think books of this such are too depressing to read, or makes one think too much, but that is exactly what humans need to do. In the novel, it says, “We need to really be bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?” (Fahrenheit 52) In 2014, Fahrenheit 451 made it to the Banned Books of America website for complaints over “religious beliefs.” It is ironic that a book that is about banning books, was actually banned from a school. This interesting piece of work has in fine print what the society that we live in could be leading towards.
Censorship is a way of silencing those who try to speak out against the system. The story Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is about a man named Montag who is a firefighter in the future where they burn books. Montag starts to wonder why they are burning the books so he tries to get some answers. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses tone as a unifying device for plot, his feelings toward censorship, and mood.
This burden often falls on teachers. The purpose of this research paper is to discuss censorship in schools and to argue that the censorship of books in the high school English curriculum is limiting and takes away literature that is meaningful to students. How a Book is Censored Brinkley describes a few actions that can lead to the censoring of a book in a school or school system: An expression of concern is simply a question about the material with overtones of disapproval; an oral complaint is an oral challenge to the contents of a work; a written complaint is a formal written challenge to the school about the contents of a work; and a public attack is a public statement challenging the contents of a work that is made outside of the school, usually to the media to gain support for further action (1999). Brinkley also points out an important difference between selection and censorship: Selection is the act of carefully choosing works for an English course that will be age-appropriate, meaningful, and fulfill objectives, while censorship is the act of excluding works that some con... ...
How does one know if something is right or wrong if they do not even know what the issue is? It is impossible. Censorship promotes the idea of ignorance for sensitive or offensive topics to impose a party’s agenda upon people. Ray Bradbury articulates this idea perfectly in Fahrenheit 451 through a dystopian society fixated on stopping the exchange of knowledge between people. In today’s society censorship is just as prevalent, and a bigger issue than people realize.