Censorship In Fahrenheit 451 And Harrison Bergeron

Collin Sorge

Mrs. Mohr

English 1 Honors: Period 3

12 September, 2016

Censorships Effect on Society

In Fahrenheit 451, “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury and “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, censorship has created an apathetic and ignorant society. In Fahrenheit 451 the government’s censorship has caused everybody to lose emotion. Once the society stopped reading it was easy for the government to censor everything they did. The fire department is obviously a part of censorship. They burn anything or anyone that has knowledge of the literate past. The firemen burn without knowledge of why they are actually burning. The fire department shows their flaws the most when they burn the woman with her ‘banned’ books. They do not even try to get

Some effects of the censorship that the parlor makes are how the families treat each other. Mildred’s friends talk about their family like they are just another TV character. Mrs. Bowles does not even see her kids often, and when she does she just puts them in front of the TV. The society also has no feeling for death, they just think of people as inanimate objects that can be replaced. Such as when Mildred talks about Clarisse dying. Mildred said that she forgot to tell Montag about Clarisse dying, showing the censorship has caused them to lose emotion. Mrs. Phelps also has no feeling for death because she said that it she or her husband dies then they will move on like nothing has happened. Mrs. Phelps is just one example of how nobody cares about anybody dying and how the society has lost emotion because of the censorship enforced by the government. Mildred shows how censorship has affected the citizens by this, “ ‘Mildred, you didn't put in the alarm!’ She shoved the valise in the waiting beetle,climbed in, and sat mumbling, ‘Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now…’ ”(Bradbury 108). This shows that

In “Harrison Bergeron” the handicaps make all of the citizens exactly the same. The handicaps do not let people be who they really are and actually holds back the citizens ability to do things. It seems like the handicaps actually make it worse for the advanced people because it makes them suffer. “They weren’t really very good-no better than anybody else would have been anyway....George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn't get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.”(Vonnegut 1). This also shows that the handicaps make everybody the same. The noise handicaps are for preventing smart people from thinking about why the government controls them, like it did with George. The noise handicaps are for people who are smarter than average, but it seems like it makes them below average because it gives people headaches and average people do not have to deal with it. The government in their society has caused everyone to have no individuality with handicaps. In “The Pedestrian” censorship is shown by how people use technology. Everyone besides Leonard Mead just sits inside and watches TV all night. Leonard Mead is just walking outside and he gets put in jail for it. This shows that just for doing a simple thing, like walking, you will get punished