The Theme Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

Censorship is a way of control. Censorship is used to control the social interaction of the public with the media. Such a censorship can be directed to various medias if the media is judged to be either immoral, blasphemous, obscene, unpatriotic, radical or seditious. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, the government prohibited and burned books; the public is denied access to and the use of books the government deemed as objectionable or promoted individuality. The public is only authorized to access, keep and read rule books, trade journals and the three-dimensional comic books, any other books were subjected to burning. Furthermore, physical contacts and interactions or relations between the citizens are farther diminished by media censorship;

Many governments use censorship to protect their citizens, however, a censorship concealing the truth and hindering individuality is harmful and impedes society progression as demonstrated in Fahrenheit 451. The negative impacts of government oppression and the literary devices of irony, realism, allusion, conflict, and symbolism Ray Bradbury used to develop the theme of censorship in Fahrenheit 451 will be discussed below using America as the reflection of the broader society. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury used irony to portray several methods the authority has executed to oppress information and control the population. A government may employ various methods of censoring media contents from banning the use of such media to making the media content disappear completely from the face of the earth which amounts to societal oppression with regards to information access (Harrison 59). In Fahrenheit 451, to ensure certain information has been completely eliminated, the authority used the method of censoring books; the government employed

Censorship imposed on illegal books in Fahrenheit 451 is a symbol of the past and current America; the novel is a fiction representation of the state of the nation and how the government maneuvers itself through the social life of its citizens. Throughout history media contents including books, plays, songs, and other media have been routinely and legally banned or censored in America. In 1873, for instance, Comstock law was passed banning the circulation of materials deemed immoral or obscene ("Censorship in the United States"). In Fahrenheit 451, just like in real life, the ban is imposed on books deemed to cause public harm. When Captain Beatty is explaining to Montag about the background of burning books, he stated, “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lung? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book” (Bradbury 57). What Captain Beatty was trying to convey to Montag was that books are harmful as books show people the horrors of life and expose people to death, disease, starvation and other calamities, therefore, in the interest of maintaining a happy society, those books would be