Banning Books In Fahrenheit 451, By Ray Bradbury

There are numerous books that have been banned or challenged. There are many reasons why books get banned or challenged and removed from shelves. “Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, was removed due to religion and social customs. Challenged books are not books that are kept of off library shelves, they are books that have censored content or the content is just removed in general (Crum, 1). Challenges are able to remove a certain book from the series, but the challenge can’t completely remove it (Foerstel, 1). Challenges are usually presented by groups of unhappy people or organizations that the book offends (Crum, 1). Most of the time, parents are the ones who attempt to challenge the books (Foerstel, 1). Usually the challenges are made because

The American Library Association does not ban or challenge books (Challenges, 1). To ban a book, a committee meets to determine if the book should be banned (Alexander, 1). Even if the committee decides to ban the book, the ban challenge can still go to court. Even if the Supreme Court bans a book, people can still read it because the government can’t take away the people’s first amendment right of freedom of speech, which would include books (Challenges, 1). Also, many people think that students should have the right to read whatever they want to read (Sloan, 1). In the words of Noam Chomsky, “If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all” (Mill, 1). Many people believe that banned books give realistic views of society to students. Teachers also say that reading banned books promote intellectual freedom. Even if a book is banned, it can usually be found in libraries (Foerstel, 1). The reason for that is, no organization can keep a book off of library shelves legally, except for the U.S. Copyright service, but that organization has never banned a book. Parents, however, do have the authority to control what their

Ray Bradbury told Don Swaim during his interview that “today, we don’t have to burn books anymore, because we don’t even teach reading in second, third and fourth grades, we have graduating high schoolers that don’t even know how to read – that’s criminal.” The original publisher of “Fahrenheit 451” is Ballantine Books (Sova, pg. 134-135). In 1967, a modified version of “Fahrenheit 451” came out that eliminated more than 75 passages of the book due to sexual content and language. Ray Bradbury found out about the modified book, and demanded that only the original book be sold. The publisher agreed, so the regular book has been available since 1980. After the incident, the ALA (American Library Association) started to check books, to make sure that they weren’t modified in any way. In 1992, school officials in Irvine, California forced teachers to mark out all of the vulgar words in the book. The school officials challenged “Fahrenheit 451” because they said the language was too vulgar for high school students (Kelley, 1). The school officials got in trouble for blacking out the words, so the school now uses the original book. After the incident, “Fahrenheit 451” was banned because of “Violence or Negativity” because the book was deemed to vulgar for kids. “Fahrenheit 451” was also challenged in 2006 by a Texas school for “blasphemous dialogue”.