Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

Would you like a world where your voice was silenced, a world where you have limited options when it comes to entertainment, a world where you see the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times. If not, maybe you would like your government to limit how much you learn about your favorite topic. If not, you may be opposed to government censorship. In the book Fahrenheit 451 the author Ray Bradbury portrays a society where the government has complete control over what people read, see, think and feel. The government in this book uses censorship to maintain power and control the people. He highlights the dangers of this by showing how people lose their personalities and everyone states to become similar. In the Interview Historian Discusses The

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 displays the cons of government censorship. Captain Beatty, a firefighter responsible for burning books to censor them, says "You can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can't last" (Bradbury, 56), as he burns the books. This quote shows how the government creates a narrative for people to follow pushing their own opinions while trying to justify the dismissal of others. At the same time this quote shows Bradbury means that people should come to their own conclusions even if the conclusions are bad. and how this can only be done with speech and access to uncensored information. Furthermore in the article “Historian Discusses The Politics That Shape U.S. History In Schools,” Hasan Kwame Jeffries describes how the government censoring information from students is a poor decision because this will lead to important information being left out of curriculums and lessons and even if they are brought up later it would still lead to confusion of students . What he is referring to is the 1776 Commision that supports a patriotic education. Jeffrires claims “ as educators, as teachers, our principal charge is to teach the truth. We can't stop teaching the truth or not teach the truth at a certain age and then

In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury creates a story of a dystopian future where the government controls the truth by burning books, changing information, and using intimidation to suppress creativity . At one point in the book Captain Beatty explains to Guy Montag, "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" (Bradbury, 59). Here, Bradbury shows how the government's power is used to control information based on preferences, therefore there would never be an unbiased way to censor information, since everyone has certain things even if they are unaware of it themselves. By being able to regulate fake news, the government becomes judges of truth; this gives them ultimately more power while limiting the freedom of the people. Rose and Mchangama argue in their article, "But it is equally crucial for a genuine liberal democracy that no one, and particularly no official institution, gets to determine the truth in matters of politics and public debate. (Rose &