Censorship In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Imagine living in a world where any literary connection or indication is forbidden. Ray Bradbury envisioned a world throughout the novel Fahrenheit 451 is filled with extreme oppression and the effect of censorship on a society, ignorance, and the effects of the media. Fahrenheit four fifty-one portrays a dystopian society in which the dangers of a divided society can affect its’ people. The novel is set in future America where books are outlawed with firemen burning them. Through the protagonist Guy Montag, Bradbury illustrates a conflict between man versus man: Man versus self, and man versus technology using a theme of censorship. The importance of books is used as a symbol and a focal point to show each characters true values and feelings.

Bradbury intagretes nature imagery to represent a force of innocence and truth. Clarisse 's adolescent is one that cannot be denied. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and the experience changes him extremely. Clarisse represents nature or some suitable source that is organic and natural. On their first encounter Clarisse challenges Montag by asking him if he was happy. He then uses the rest of his night to contemplate her words and realizes how Mildred and him are very distant. He even goes as far to say, “a silly empty man near a silly empty women” (Bradbury 41). Animal imagery is also depicted in this novel, but much of it seem to be ironic. Although the society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature, many frightening mechanical devices are modeled and named after animals, such as the mechanical hound. The hound is robot in the shape of a dog represents the control of the government, and a watchful eye that knows right from wrong. “It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think” (Bradbury 27). This clarifies that the mechanical hound serves as a satiric metaphor for Montag and his dystopian society. It is programmed by the government to act and function as if it were a human being: however, the hound does not have any original thoughts or emotions, but enforces the laws and punishes the ones that don 't follow it. “slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in ts gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse” (Bradbury