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Essays about book censorship
Essays about book censorship
Essays about book censorship
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“ . . . quality of information . . . leisure to digest it . . . the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two¨ (Bradbury 81). Anything that promotes thinking is frowned upon in this society. The speaker, Faber, is talking about that very concept: knowledge. Here, he’s explaining the three things that people are missing from their lives to the protagonist. Fahrenheit 451 is a story written by Ray Bradbury in 1953; it involves a man called Montag, a fireman who burns books for a living. In this society, people are constantly distracted by music, tv, censored news, and more. The reason for all these distractions lies in the government, as they desire ultimate control over their citizens. Clarisse, …show more content…
This is dangerous, however, since he must face the chief fireman, his wife, and the rest of society almost entirely on his own. The poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold proves each of Faber´s statements about what is missing from people's lives due to its stanzas about thought and the world.
The Professor's first statement was about the quality of information, which is mentioned in certain parts of Fahrenheit 451 and in a poem by Matthew Arnold. One scene in Bradbury´s novel has Faber talking about why few read books, ¨. . . hated and feared. . . truthfully recorded details of life . . . cycle back to reality . . .¨ (Bradbury 79). People are afraid of the information in books and how they talk about the truth about life and humanity. They shun novels and what they have to say because the person doesn't agree with it or because they get confused by the differing views and arguments. In Dover Beach the author mentions how Sophocles thought deeply about sadness, ¨Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow / Of human misery; we / find also in the sound a thought¨ (Arnold 17-19). Arnold´s poem is talking about how a human´s sadness and despair is intertwined with thinking. The ¨turbid ebb and flow¨
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.
Kofi Annan said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family” but not in the society of Fahrenheit 451 or the world we live in today. The two societies are similar in the way that social status is focused on and that many people hide their guilty pleasures due to what others think. A difference between the societies is that thinking is punished for in Fahrenheit 451 while in the world today you're encouraged to think by elders but discouraged by your peers.
The theme of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 can be viewed from several different angles. First and foremost, Bradbury's novel gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury understood censorship to be a natural outcropping of an overly tolerant society. Once one group objects to something someone has written, that book is modified and censorship begins. Soon, another minority group objects to something else in the book, and it is again edited until eventually the book is banned altogether. In Bradbury's novel, society has evolved to such an extreme that all literature is illegal to possess. No longer can books be read, not only because they might offend someone, but because books raise questions that often lead to revolutions and even anarchy. The intellectual thinking that arises from reading books can often be dangerous, and the government doesn't want to put up with this danger. Yet this philosophy, according to Bradbury, completely ignores the benefits of knowledge. Yes, knowledge can cause disharmony, but in many ways, knowledge of the past, which is recorded in books, can prevent man from making similar mistakes in the present and future.
Everyone has the ability to look at where the world is today and picture what the future might hold. That’s exactly what Huxley, Orwell and Bradbury did in their futuristic novels, though exaggerating quite a bit. In Huxley’s novel Brave New World, he depicts a society where people are decanted from bottles instead of being born from mothers. George Orwell gives us a glimpse at a world where everything is regulated, even sex, in his novel 1984. Bradbury foresaw the future in the most accurate way in his novel Fahrenheit 451; writing about a future without literature to guard the people from negative feelings, just as our college campuses in America are doing by adding trigger warnings to books with possible offensive content.
“Their optimism, their willingness to have trust in a future where civilizations self-destruction comes to a full stop, has to do with their belief in the changed relationship between humans and their world” says Lee (Lee 1). In “As the Constitution Says” by Joseph F. Brown, Brown talks about a NEA experiment that found American’s have been reading less and less and our comprehension skills are dramatically dropping because of this (Brown 4). Bradbury saw little use in the technology being created in his time, he avoided airplanes, driving automobiles, and eBooks. Bradbury did not even allow his book to be sold and read on eBooks until 2011. If one takes away books, then one takes away imagination. If one takes away imagination, then one takes away creativity. If one takes away creativity, then one takes away new ideas for technology and the advancement of the world. 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
Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel, by Ray Bradbury, where individuality and knowledge is frowned upon, and books are illegal. Although, the protagonists, Montag, starts to question why these things are considered horrific in their despotic society. On Montag’s journey, he becomes close to several people who assist him in pondering the true reason books are banned and how it leads to society's low standards of knowledge. Readers can use the author’s tone to infer his purpose. By analyzing his diction, the purpose can be seen, and related back to our society today.
Citizens in the Fahrenheit 451 have a difficult time with critical thinking because they have simply been taught to spit out answers and move on. The central authorities change their rules to make critical thinking a taboo: “It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not” (Bradbury 29-30). Clarisse struggles with her peer’s lack of critical thinking, and being taught things but not learning their meaning. Without training to think outside the box, students are left with training only to find stale words that are the answer, but have no meaning to them. This in turn leaves society without problem solving skills. Montag also observes Mildred’s friends’ blank minds: “So it was now, in his own parlor, with these women twisting in their chairs under his gaze, lighting cigarettes, blowing smoke, touching their sun-fired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire from his look” (Bradbury 95). Montag finds the lack of thought in the women to be astonishing. They simply exist, and run through their daily routines without questioning anything. They are nearly clueless without the ability to think critically. Their society lacks depth in different opinions and invention due to their deficiency in critical thinking. Some argue that if we’re all clueless and do not question
The article Fahrenheit 451 Revisited written by Paul Trout from the source Forum on Education and Academics talks about the importance of education, and how the novel Fahrenheit 451 provokes introspection and discussions which helps students learn more through a better education. It states in the beginning of the article, “The story focus on a fireman who burns book because the people want books burn. As, Beatty the fireman chief explains mass culture slowly discredited books, replacing their hard earned and sometimes disturbing messages with fun experiences such as interactive soap operas telecast on four walls. Because books disturb people by posing questions and contradicting each other, it is up to the Firemen to not let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world.” This quotation from the article helps prove the importance of books, and explains if books were not allowed then education would not be important in todays society. The author Paul Trout explains more in detail the benefit of reading Fahrenheit 451 because its a good example of explaining anti-intellectual aspects in education for students. This benefits my essay because it explains the meaning of the book, and shows the importance of it for students in todays society.
One of England’s greatest literary figures, William Shakespeare, expressed the truth about coveting knowledge by saying that “ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven” (William Shakespeare Quotes). One must assume that Ray Bradbury, Author of Fahrenheit 451, learned from this. Bradbury’s novel shares a similar portrayal towards coveting knowledge. In the novel the protagonist realizes that he is living in a world where knowledge is lost. People abide by rules and restrictions given to them by the government. There is nothing in this society to make people think about how valuable knowledge is, except for books. The protagonist is a fireman whose job is to seek out books and destroy the contents. The mass population believes that books are a waste of time and useless. The protagonist also believes this until a change of heart leads to a journey of identity and curiosity. Bradbury believes that this type of world will eventually turn into our own. Clearly, Ray Bradbury’s outlook for the future of man is grim because he represses intellectual endeavor, lacks critical thinking, and becomes destructive.
The North Korean government is known as authoritarian socialist; one-man dictatorship. North Korea could be considered a start of a dystopia. Dystopia is a community or society where people are unhappy and usually not treated fairly. This relates how Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 shows the readers how a lost of connections with people and think for themselves can lead to a corrupt and violent society known as a dystopia.
Are you really happy? Or are you sad about something? Sad about life or money, or your job? Any of these things you can be sad of. Most likely you feel discontentment a few times a day and you still call yourself happy. These are the questions that Guy Montag asks himself in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this book people are thinking they are happy with their lives. This is only because life is going so fast that they think they are but really there is things to be sad about. Montag has finally met Clarisse, the one person in his society that stops to smell the roses still. She is the one that gets him thinking about how his life really is sad and he was just moving too fast to see it. He realizes that he is sad about pretty much everything in his life and that the government tries to trick the people by listening to the parlor and the seashells. This is just to distract people from actual emotions. People are always in a hurry. They have 200 foot billboards for people driving because they are driving so fast that they need more time to see the advertisement. Now I am going to show you who are happy and not happy in the book and how our society today is also unhappy.
You take advantage of your life every day. Have you ever wondered why? You never really think about how much independence you have and how some of us treat books like they’re useless. What you don’t realize is that both of those things are the reason that we live in such a free society. If we didn’t have books and independence, we would treat death and many other important things as if it were no big deal. That is the whole point of Ray Bradbury writing this book.
In the futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451, the author, Ray Bradbury, expresses several problems that influence the story. Many of these problems have to do with the behavior of the people in the twenty- fourth century society. One major problem is that firemen have been given the job of burning books in order to stop the spreading of ideas, and to cause all of society to reform and therefore be happy. Many people do not agree with this and they try hard to keep books alive, even though they may be killed for it. Guy Montag, who in the beginning of the story is a proud fireman, later doubts his job and joins those who preserve books. One person who teaches him about books is an old man named Faber who is a retired English professor. During a conversation between Montag and Faber, Montag states, “That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want”(pg.85). What he means by this is that he is willing to risk his life to help save books for others to read and enjoy. However, Montag’s wife, Mildred, does not care for books as much as Montag because she knows books are illegal and she fears for her life. Mildred tells Montag how afraid she is by saying, “They might come and burn the house and the family. Why should I read? What for?(pg.73)” Montag is upset when he hears this because he sees that there is a problem with burning books. Indeed there is a problem because books allow people to express themselves, learn, dream, and have fun. In a society such as the one found in Fahrenheit 451, people are not allowed to experience any of these things and they are less individual.
In the book, Fahrenheit 451,written by Ray Bradbury, he had put in literary devices to help readers understand what is going on throughout the context of the story. The literary devices used in the book were imagery and personification. These literary devices will help shows how technology ruins personal relationships.
Bradbury attacks loss of literature in the society of Fahrenheit 451 to warn our current society about how literature is disappearing and the effects on the people are negative. While Montag is at Faber’s house, Faber explains why books are so important by saying, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (79). Faber is trying to display the importance of books and how without them people lack quality information. In Electronics and the Decline of Books by Eli Noam it is predicted that “books will become secondary tools in academia, usurped by electronic media” and the only reason books will be purchased will be for leisure, but even that will diminish due to electronic readers. Books are significant because they are able to be passed down through generation. While online things are not concrete, you can not physically hold the words. Reading boost creativity and imagination and that could be lost by shifting to qui...