Book Burning In Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is very different from modern day society. In fahrenheit 451, the firemen go to people 's houses when they get a call that someone has books. Firemen rush to their houses and they search for the book’s if they find any they burn the books as well as the house because they don 't know if there’s anymore hidden “The whole house is going up said beatty”. Fahrenheit 451 porches are illegal, as well they 're not allowed to have their books out in the open and if they do and if anyone even spots them their house goes up in flames.

The novel “Fahrenheit 451” is an extended version of a much shorter piece of fiction written by Ray Bradbury called “The fireman.” This novel is written in third-person limited omniscient, and the narrator focuses on the perspective of the protagonist, Guy Montag. “Fahrenheit 451” is written in 1953 but is set sometime after 1990. Guy Montag lives in an era where firemen, like himself, set fires to books rather than extinguishing them. The novel begins with Montag expressing great pleasure and pride with his fireman position, but that all changes as the plot progresses.

The most important theme of Fahrenheit 451 is restriction of freedom of speech because of the fear to offend another person in the society. There are strict censorship laws in the totalitarian society of Fahrenheit 451. In the novel the job of a fireman is to start a fire and watch the forbidden literature burn, these firemen had never read the books they burn nor were they all allowed to keep one for more than 24 hours. “It was a pleasure to burn”, the opening line of Fahrenheit 451 clearly states that the destructive firemen enjoyed lighting fires.

In the past, dictators censored authors. Stalin burnt books and authors of those books in Russia. When Adolf Hitler was chancellor he burnt the books that he disagreed with in the streets of Germany. These actions that the leaders of these countries left the people in the dark, just like in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 is about a dystopian society that burns books and hides the truth from people. The job that is responsible for burning books belongs to the firemen. This happened when houses became fireproof. This book has a handful of characters that blindly follow the rules. Those characters live in ignorance and in lies. Life is all about choices and the choice to follow the rules or take a stand when rules are unjust is

One aspect of book burning was considered culture in Germany, especially in schools. Many scholars searched for books that were “ungerman” and turned them into the

Fire is used to burn away the hidden wisdom within literature, to never be heard or seen, only turning to ashes of forgotten knowledge. We can find in our own history books that we too once did this. Dating as back as the middle ages the burning of books has been an issue in our own history. In the book Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission, Dirk Rohamm states, "some late antique emperor and early medieval kings used book-burning and censorship as a means of social control"(18). In other words, fire has been used as a weapon to burn books in the hopes to control nations socially and intellectually. If they are only given certain content they will not question the way society is living and this is exactly what it is like within the dystopian society of Fahrenheit 451. It is taken to the extreme, in the sense that people often fear books, finding them a threat to their way of

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them”(Ray Bradbury). In Bradbury’s utopia we can’t read? Well, at least not openly. The books are hidden in air vents and in hollowed out televisions; if found burnt by firemen who oddly are starting the fires instead of putting them out. There are very few books remaining in his world, all the great literature had been lost to the flames. Now in our world books are constantly read, written and treasured by all walks of life. The books are loved and awarded and not commonly burnt. Books are not just

Our society has, and is having, many issues when it comes to choosing between solving problems and avoiding problems, and Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, has seen this and he represents it with fire. He wanted to display some messages through fire, so he has society use fire to remove problems, but this blocks society’s ability to be humane and it allows them to have an unnatural urge to remove and destroy. Also, Bradbury tries to tell the readers that fire is part of nature and it can help the humanity and creativity within people. When fire is used in unnatural ways, it changes the thought process of characters, and this shows the general message of how moving fast and not learning destroys people’s humanity. Fire has been a constant symbol used by

when the Nazis burned the books to restrict free speech and open communication of ideas, they later turned to burning human corpses like the jews during the Holocaust. so to restrict human liberty in one season becomes a tool where it can lead to much graver violations of humanity in another. it all has to start somewhere, so burning books is a very dangerous precedent.

The Nazi book burning that occurred in 1933 took place during a very dark time in our world’s history. The Nazi regime, which was ruled by Hitler, had taken over most of Germany by this point in time as what we now know as the Holocaust. The word Holocaust means “sacrifice by fire”, and is displayed partly by the burning of an estimated eighty to ninety thousand volumes.

Part One of the book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, describes a man, Guy Montag, living in a dystopian world where books are burned because there are just other, better, things to do such as imaginary “families” in walls made of TVs. As a result, in the novel, firemen actually start fires to burn the books rather than put them out. Before the novel even begins you get a sense that it is going to include fire of some sort from the title, for example, like the burning of things. In addition, according to a review from The New York Times, it seems that Fahrenheit 451 is, “Brilliant… Startling and ingenious… Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.” Also, from The Washington Post the author, Ray Bradbury, is, “One of this country’s most beloved writers...A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic.” Now, moving into the background information, the book was written in 1953 due to the progression of technology in the US such as television. Bradbury was afraid that because of all of the new technology people would disregard books for a thing of the past just like what actually happened in the novel. Now let's get to the actual review.

Potter Stewart once said, “Censorship reflects a societies lack of confidence in itself.” Stewart is saying that is a governing body feels he need to dictate and regulate the knowledge obtained by their citizens, they lack the basic leadership skill of confidence. Censorship may even extend to a point in which the government burns knowledge, books, and cleanse their citizens from independent thoughts. In Fahrenheit 451, the fireman use fire to burn books and remove knowledge from their society. Although the citizens of Fahrenheit 451 believe fire is a tool used by fireman to burn books ad houses, nevertheless, Ray Bradbury uses fire to symbolize evil and destructive forces because he wants to show that destroying knowledge results in anarchy

Ray Bradbury once said, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them”. Book burning is a form of censorship, but as Bradbury has explained here, not reading them is worse than burning them. This could go either way, but book burning both ways has been a big element through history. Thus, there has been many cases of book burning throughout history that are religious book burnings, Nazi book burnings, and historical book burnings.

“Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than start them up and get the going?” Guy Montag, the protagonist of the story Fahrenheit 451 asks fire chief Beatty. If firemen prevent fires today, what do they do in Fahrenheit 451’s society. This book is about a dystopian society, with a very different, but strangely similar, world to ours.

The power of education, decreasing availability of books, and popular entertainment in Fahrenheit 451 on the society greatly impacts the average American’s manner of thought. As the government establishes these three factors, the people accept the regulations, hoping they would improve their lives, yet it only brings a corrupt dystopia. While many of the people blindly favor the new rules, few of them see the negative aspect of them, especially Montag, who begins to view his profession differently. The fireman initially believed that burning books amends the wrong, yet the government conceals their true intention of incinerating books since they know that books hold knowledge, thus they suppress the owning of knowledge to easily control an