Fahrenheit 451 Shouldn T Be Banned

Banned Book Essay

Since as early as the 20th century, banning books has slowly increased. According to an article on Gale, books that feature people of color or feature a character apart from the LGBTQ+, are more likely to get banned than books that aren’t. In 2006, Montgomery County Texas banned the dystopian Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Turnbow). Although Fahrenheit 451 has vulgar language, it shouldn’t be banned because it encourages the reader to seek knowledge through books and it promotes self-awareness. Ever since Fahrenheit 451 was released, there have been many controversies about the language and storyline of the book. For example, in many county’s it had already been challenged, but in 2006 Montgomery County took action and banned Fahrenheit

They only need understanding, to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession? They don’t feed it to rookies like they used to. Damn shame”(Bradbury 62). In this quote, the captain of the fire station named Beatty is talking about how all firemen go through a curiosity phase, to try and stop Montag from reading more books. But in doing so he says “Damn shame”, which if taken out of context can seem a little explicit. However, it wasn’t taken into account that Beatty wasn’t trying to use it in an aggressive manner, it was used to display him reminiscing to himself. That is why the challenge against Fahrenheit 451 in Montgomery County 2006 is not valid. Throughout the story of Fahrenheit 451, it promotes reading books to gain intelligence, which is a good mindset for school kids to learn. ”Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical about them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us” (Bradbury 90). Ray Bradbury’s message throughout the whole book is that books are powerful, which is why they are illegal to