Examples Of Government Authority In Fahrenheit 451

Government’s Authority against Knowledge
Censorship will burn this world to the ground! Throughout Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, the main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who realizes that he is not feeling true happiness with himself or his lifestyle. Due to his unhappiness with his very low emotional and social health, he starts to become more curious about books and tries to figure out why society has decided to create the idea of banishing books forever. The author throughout the novel begins to develop the main theme with the corruption of Montag’s world by explaining the forgotten and decreased use of books, frustration and confusion with the material’s different meanings, and society’s idea of making everyone become the same.

Montag wanted to know what had caused the government to suddenly get rid of books, and so Beatty answered him, saying there were objections to more ‘special interests’ or things that would be considered offensive to them. Bigger the population, the more minorities…The people in this book, this play, and this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, or mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minorities with their novels are to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did; Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive…Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, and you are allowed to read comics, good old confessions, or trade journals. (Bradbury 54-55) Beatty also clarifies that another factor in the banishment of books was the increasing sales of new forms of entertainment-like TVs,

According to Montag’s society, knowledge was too powerful and made those who knew less than others, or people who were considered ‘more intelligent’, would often create conflict. With schools turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners…the word `intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be…Surely you remember the boy in your school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course, it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone is born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone is made equal. Each man is the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower or judge themselves against. (Bradbury 55-56) Another reason that Beatty gives for this occurrence is that people were envying others for how much more they have read and felt inferior. He is talking of society and how the leaders of this society decided just to make people happy and give them the illusion of knowledge without truly giving them any of it, and blinded people with upgraded forms of different media