Fahrenheit 451 Allusion Essay

Allusion Essay Ray Bradbury uses the allusion,” The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose”, from Shakespeare's “Merchant of Venice”, to show that anyone can twist scripture or literary works into support for their point of view. This allusion originates from the “Merchant of Venice”, written by Shakespeare. In the play, Shylock quotes scripture to justify his method of collecting loans. Antonio, the man borrowing a loan from Shylock says, “The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose”, this suggest that even though Shylock justifies his actions with scripture, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily right. In an article by The Wichita Eagle, the author uses a piece of scripture, “With a male you shall not lie, the lying down of a woman. It is an abomination.”, to show how people who are against the gay movement could use this to justify how it is wrong, even though it is not the literal meaning of the text. The author of this article

In this argument, Beatty argues that books are useless and that learning is dangerous, since it makes people go crazy and think they are smarter than they really are. He uses the allusion, “The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose”, to show that anyone could quote a book to back up their side. This entire argument Beatty is trying to warp Montag’s view on books, by quoting them and talking about how they corrupt minds. In a way Beatty is the Devil citing scripture, because he is telling Montag about how bad these books are by using quotes from books. He is changing the context of the words, to fit his meaning in order to warp someone else’s views. This supports the author’s view that the government shouldn’t censor books, by doing this they are warping our minds into believing certain books are bad. The government should allow their people to decide how they feel about books, instead of just censoring