Research Paper On Fahrenheit 451

Censorship: good or bad? Censorship is a heavily debated topic in the world. There are places like China, where things like the internet is censored heavily. While other places like America where only certain things are censored such as things that include, offensive material or material dangerous to the public. There are many ways and opinions to look at censorship, however, censorship is a double-edged sword. Too much censorship is a bad thing, as seen in the book Fahrenheit 451, but too little censorship is also a bad thing. In other terms, censorship should be used, however, not abused. The book Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, plays around the idea of over censorship. In the book, Firemen set fires to houses that have books,

Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts’" (Bradbury 27). Here one can see that the censorship of books has dumbed down schools in the society in the book. Society in fact has been dulled down to the point where people would rather sit in front of several tv screens and digest media rather than talk to one-another. The idea of censoring books is an idea that has been seen before in our own school system in

This, however, is both a good and bad thing. Certain books like the Anarchists Cookbook written by William Powell, is currently banned in America for good reasons. This book itself contains instructions to manufacture explosives, as well as drugs such as LSD. This was a good use of censorship as allowing a book that teaches the public these things shouldn’t be allowed on the streets. On the other hand, in the case of Board of Education v. Pico (1982), the supreme court ruled that the school has authority to monitor the education of the students and can remove information that is educationally unsuitable for the students (McLaughlin 9). This is both good and bad. There are some books that are unfit for children and high school students, however, this again can be abused. Certain books that have been pulled off school’s bookshelves include: A Catcher in the Rye written by Harper Lee, Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury and To Kill a Mockingbird written by J.D. Salinger. A Catcher in the Rye has been challenged by schools for many reasons not limited to but including: Anti-White, obscene, excessive vulgar language, sexual scenes, immoral issues (Banning). Fahrenheit 451 was challenged by schools due to the excessive amount of hells and damns used in the text. Finally, To Kill a Mockingbird was banned in some schools due to the book “Promoting white supremacy” (Banned). Many people will debate over these book bans;