Censorship Exposed In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 addresses our society and its historical events and explores the dangers of censorship and its ramifications. Throughout the story, Bradbury makes parallels to historical events that happened both before and after he wrote the novel. These historical allusions link the worlds of Fahrenheit 451 and our own by mirroring one another. A historical analysis of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury reveals Bradbury feared censorship, the current state of world wars, and the rise of technology, and worried about each historical event's effect on the world.

Censorship is a centuries-old issue in the United States. The importance of intellectual freedom and the freedom of speech is particularly evident in libraries,

During the 1950s there were multiple cases of books being banned. For example, on Nov. 3, 1953, Shipley(Richland County Sheriff Jesse Shipley) wrote Republican Illinois Governor William Stratton, providing quotations from the book that, Shipley argued, would “lower the morality of American boys and girls” with “vulgar, obscene, and profane language to lower the respect and sanctity for our institutions of marriage.” Shipley also stated his belief that the book was “communistic in purpose”. Situations with people reporting books because they seemed to incorporate and did not fit the social norms or someone just didn't agree with the context of the books were all too common during the 1950s era. “Such an exchange was all too common in the 1950s. In the post-war, Cold War years, conformity reigned, and fear and suspicion about alternative views of social norms were rampant”. Bradbury, who wrote Fahrenheit 451 in 1953 converses about this topic. “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.” (Ray Bradbury, 57). Society works too hard to satisfy everyone and fails to recognize that not everyone can be happy; nonetheless, by continuing to try to please everyone, they end up undermining what makes humans distinct, their sense of uniqueness and personality. Ironically, the novel's title, "Fahrenheit 451," is a reference to the censorship ordeal at the time, as Bradbury feared that his novel about censorship and conformity would be censorship itself, leaving him with the name Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which the paper of a book