Role Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

Aryssa Singh
Period 5
Mr. Dudek
Honors Introduction To Literature
Fahrenheit 451: Censorship, the Attention Economy, and Current Society Prompt: Is Farenheit 451 a relevant novel?
Ray Bradburry’s novel Fahrenheit 451 introduces a society that conforms to its own destruction. Through censorship and technological distraction, the citizens of Fahrenheit 451’s dystopian state are completely unaware of the world around them, and the government simply exploits this lack of awareness to continue its repression. Ray Bradburry’s novel was written during the height of the Cold War, when widespread paranoia encouraged censorship and disproportionately targeted writers and literature. Additionally, Fahrenheit 451 critiques the book burnings

In Fahrenheit 451, the TV parlor and seashells constantly take Mildred’s focus away from reality. In the novel, Mildred never truly experiences reality because she uses technology as a way to cope with her general unhappiness. Nowadays, it is entirely possible to use technology as an unhealthy, dissociative mechanism. For example, Harvard psychologist B.F. Skinner’s well-known study notes that rewarding people in intervals leaves people wanting more. Technology companies have capitalized on this to capture people’s attention, and in some ways, have turned attention into currency. For example, Spotify has two models for users, they can pay to have the ad disappear or pay with attention and listen to the ad (Berkeley Economic Review, 2022). While the true extent of big-tech’s influence on people’s attention and the attention economy as a whole is currently unknown, Bradburry’s prediction of attention becoming an exploited commodity certainly is

Bradburry observed the book burnings of the Nazi regime, and how Nazi’s would try to normalize their ideology by destroying information that didn’t fit their narrative (Rothman, 2018). While the far right in the US luckily isn’t committing crimes comparable to Nazi Germany, the practice of censoring opposing information is still practiced. For example, an article from NPR reports, “Just during the 2021-22 school year, more than 1,600 book titles were banned, according to a by the group PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression” (Limbong, 2022). This report also notes that these book bans disproportionately target stories emphasizing the oppression of colored people and the LGBTQ+ community (Limbong, 2022). When 7 out of 10 members of the Republican party believe in the Great Replacement Theory (the idea that the white race is being replaced), and are a party that continuously makes anti-gay and anti-trans legislation, it clearly indicates that the far right relies on the oppression of minorities to advance their power. Deliberate censorship of information that could contradict the common excuses for far-right bigotry clearly helps advance paleoconservative agendas, as Fahrenheit 451