Role Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

In the novel Fahrenheit 451 author Ray Bradbury portrays in idea that censorship can lead to a big issue of curiosity and rebellion; this becomes clear when Montag starts to go against his job and also against the government.

As books unfold and start to show their meanings, questions start to rise. What about when you're not even allowed to have books? In this book, books are illegal. This begins to spark little bits of curiosity throughout society. There are people who try to stop this sparks from spreading, but its hard to stop a growing mind and its thoughts. When the government places censorship in the society, the banning of books, curiosity starts to flow through the minds of civilians even if they try to ignore it. This curiosity starts rebellion, and the limiting of people's knowledge.

Censorship can easily lead to curiosity of what is being censored, this first appears in the book when Montag meets Clarisse. She sticks his curiosity when she starts to propose a foreign idea,” Is it true that long ago fireman put fires out instead of going to start them?”(page 8). At this point of the story, it starts conveying the dystopian side of the book by showing us a type of future. This supports the message by showing that the government is hiding information from the past. A bite later Clarisse sparks a new idea,”And people sat there

sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk...My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn’t look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn’t want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life.” (page 63). Clarisse is an especially up front character when she says this. This dialogue shows that the government is so worried about the knowledge of people that they don't want the people in this society to have anywhere or time to think about anything or talk to anyone. In this passage Clarisse is explaining the a thought through an explanation of why the government does what it does, although she doesn't tell us why. The most upfront curiosity in the book comes from Clarisse.

As this curiosity grows the characters start to question their own knowledge and put that questioning into actions in a kind of rebelling.

One time that Montag starts to show his rebelling and questioning his own knowledge is, ‘“ Why don’t you just read use one of the poems from your little book.” Mrs. Phelps nodded. “ I think that’d be very interesting.” “ That’s not right,” wailed Mrs. Bowles. “ We can’t do that!”’(page 98). In this part of the story Montag wants to read them a peice of poetry to show them that it’s not like what the society told them it was like. We see to totally different reactions in this

passage.