Fahrenheit 451 Censorship Essay

The novel Fahrenheit 45, written in 1953 by author Ray Bradbury is considered to be one of his best works to this day. Written over 50 years ago, Fahrenheit 451 has continued to shape the minds of readers and cause readers to consider his ideas in their own minds. The fiction comes with countless warnings on the risks of prolonged overexposure to technology and abandonment of thinking. The author Ray Bradbury delves into the ideas of censorship, the overuse of technology, and paradoxes of death and life in Fahrenheit 451 as a warning to the readers on the potential dangers of technology.

Although Bradbury never uses the word “censorship” in the novel Fahrenheit 451, readers should be aware that he is deeply concerned with censorship. In Fahrenheit

Readers can relate to that by the censorship they experience on the internet. In the text, Bradbury informs readers that the government is the control of what can be accessed. The author cautions the readers by illustrating how the information the characters of the novel receive is controlled by their government, they administer this by drowning them in pointless technology in order to keep them ignorant. Bradbury’s idea is to let readers know if they immerse themselves in technology and the internet that is heavily censored, they can never fully develop their own ideas. Because of this, readers are blocked from advancing in their way of thinking, which is a problem. One character Bradbury uses to clarify the important theme in his book is Professor Faber. Faber notes in an interaction with the protagonist of the text, Guy Montag, that books gave them

The four TV walls, seashell radio, self-buttering toaster, body pumping machines, mechanical dogs, and countless other examples of misused technology are the ways that Bradbury brings the attention of readers to the problem that they are being part of. Montag’s world is riddled with people suffering and not having knowledge of their own suffering. The purpose of the body pumping machine, referred to earlier, is to pump the stomach clean and replace the blood in the bodies of those who have tried to commit suicide. When Montag’s wife Mildred tried to commit suicide, operators of the machines came and pumped her clean and told Montag about “these cases [they get] nine or ten [times] a night,” which leads readers to believe that the attempt at suicide is very common, perhaps do to the idea that people aren’t happy with their technology filled lives (Bradbury, 13). “TV families” have replaced real families “[Montag] can’t talk to [his] wife; she listens to the walls” and have caused human communication to drop, which Bradbury tells us is the reason being the unhappy masses (78). The fast cars and labour reducing technology in the text has led to a society that addicted to speed and convenience, constantly needing instant gratification but a society that doesn’t think for itself. Ray Bradbury writes this in the words of Farber “it’s immediate… it rushes