Censorship In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Knowledge Suppressed to Censorship Applied Since the beginning of time, the world has fought for its freedoms – freedoms of speech, thought, religion, and many more – often failing its attempts of achieving said ambitions because of censorship. This concept has always been a concern to the public and government shown by the dark history of ceremonies such as book burnings like in Nazi Germany where they “strove to synchronize professional and cultural organizations” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Occurrences along the lines of this exhibit the harsh reasoning behind censorship: to enforce a singular broad idea upon impressionable minds and keep them from swaying from it. This notion is considered inappropriate almost universally,

Censorship is first defined and explained by an antagonist, Captain Beatty, as doing anything that would “step on the toes of… minorities.” The society is based purely on finding happiness for the masses as Beatty also says that if they “feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.” Every idea that limits the minorities comes from trying to pursue happiness and peace for the society as a whole by avoiding conflict and making individuals equal, undefined by minorities. Their backwards world believes “we must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.” Through the dialogue of a main antagonist such as this, Bradbury expresses his opposition to the idea that we must all be like, or that we must be made equal, as he builds an extreme conformist

Clarisse McClellan, who contributes much to the development of the plot, is the first to question their society’s system of education. She claims to not attend school because of the power of controlling knowledge the school system possesses and elaborates with a metaphor telling that it’s like “a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us its wine when it's not.” Clarisse is aware of how what she is taught is not tied to any sense of reality and longs to learn for herself. Even the antagonist, Captain Beatty admits to how suppression of knowledge has been implemented saying “school is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, and finally almost completely ignored.” As Bradbury reiterates the theme of knowledge, he allows Montag to find the value in learning and power in books, stating how “it took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down” on paper and develop a complete idea which others would be capable to understand. The characters opinions of learning are stressed by Bradbury throughout the novel, coming to a consistent conclusion that censorship is not preferred because of its restrictions on