Bum the book. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag.” Fire, a dangerous tool the firemen use to control public activity, symbolizes peace to some, as it cleanses their society of what they’ve considered more dangerous than the act of destroying property and people. Montag burning Beatty to death being the most obvious example of fire being powerful within the book, yet “Fire is bright and fire is clean” (pp. 59) As Michel Foucault says, “Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.” Besides enforcing censorship through incineration, the government also enacted ways of preventing an ability to desire further knowledge.
I cannot imagine the filth these poor people were living in for fire to be extinguished by only dirt from the flammable walls, especially since buildings had very few, if any, codes to be met during this time. I was also intrigued when the author mentioned that “[Riis’] stories may have been vivid, but apparently not vivid enough to shock anyone to action [before he started photographing]” (pg. 206). Up until this point in time, people relied on writing and drawing alone to get their news, often resulted in exaggerated, biased, and false information so it is strange that already at this point in history, people are starting to dismiss public writings. But Riis pioneered and found a way to bring the expression “I’ll believe it when I see it” to real
Censorship is the practice of officially examining books, movies etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts. In Fahrenheit 451 censorship takes a major role because they censored all books. They didn 't give them permission to read neither to have books. They did this to an extreme that if they found them in someone’s house they would burn them and also the house. In this book the work of the firemen was to start the fires by burning them instead of extinguish them.
“Fahrenheit 451” talks about a future American society, where technology has affected humanity negatively. The main character is Montag, a fireman who lives in a society where censorship is heavily used to hide the history of their country. Books are banned, and firemen burn them. Montag and his wife Mildred, a technology addict, begin to read books, slowly leading them to question the countless problems in his society. In both stories, Ray Bradbury uses tone and literary devices to show how an overdependence on technology as well as a disconnection from the
Montag had shot a pulse of liquid fire onto Beatty and then watched him burn alive. (STEWE-2) He later targeted another fireman, known as Mr. Black. “And now since you're a fireman's wife, it's your house and your turn, for all the houses your husband burned and the people he hurt without thinking… Then he stood in the cold night air, waiting and at a distance he heard the fire sirens start up and run, and the Salamanders coming, coming to burn Mr. Black's house while he was away at work, to make his wife stand shivering in the morning air while the roof let go and dropped in upon the fire” (Bradbury 124). He had now eraised two of the firemen that he had worked with. (SIP-B) But this all came to an end after he met a man named Granger.
The novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, takes place in a dystopian society that strictly forbids reading or have a printed book in your possession. The protagonist named Guy Montag, is a firefighter who burns any illegal books that are found. Montag in the beginning of the novel is an average citizen who hates books and does not understand the true value of them. He is known as a salamander, Montag can walk among the books he is burning, but he won’t get affected by them. But as the story continues, he begins his transformation.
An hour of monologue, a poem, a comment, and then without even acknowledging the fact that Montag was a fireman, Faber with a certain trembling, wrote his address on a slip of paper. "For your file," he said, "in case you decide to be angry with me." The rules don’t even have to be enforced on the citizens in this novel. The rules are self-imposed this may be because the government controls the society with fear so the citizens are afraid of what might happen if they do not follow the rules. Our modern society is different from
Clarisse is like the chains breaking off of Montag or the prisoner, kept in the shadow. The allegory of the cave helps the reader understand that Clarisse was the enlightenment for Guy Montag. Throughout the entire story, Montag, and all of the other citizens were under the image that books were a bad thing, and firefighter had to light them up. Captain Beatty explains “...here was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors.
Jay Asher answers this question by saying, “No because every reader is different. There’s no book that’s inappropriate for every person, but there are people who cannot handle everything.” Nobody will have the same mindset about everything and people need to understand this. According to Ray Bradbury on page 2 of Fahrenheit 451 it reads, “While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind, they turned dark with burning.” Firemen in this society burn books to keep people from reading the knowledge inside. They do not want people to think about life and the regulations they have to follow. People don’t have the right to be free and think on their own.
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark” (Victor Hugo). And just with a spark of reading, Sherman Alexie discovers a passion for reading books, in the end saving his life from the misery of living a poor middle-class life. Similarly, it frees Frederick Douglass from the unjust life of a slave, and leads him to pursue the flame and learn to read. And with the power of fire, William Stafford sets flame to books in his poem, books that no one bothers writing, books of ignorance, books that unfortunately do not exist to save lives. Reading makes a person realize her/his position in society and defy it.