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Censorship In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

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Fahrenheit 451 has been banned or challenged throughout its existence, and students and parents alike met each act of censorship with strong retaliation because they know the themes and lessons the novel (independence, activism, and freedom of speech) will influence the reader more than the brief mentions of substance abuse, profanity, and anti-religious content. This novel, in its purest form, should be available to students all across the nation. There have been many cases of censorship for this book, one instance being at Venado Middle School in Irvine, California in 1992. Students were provided the book, only to have all the “hells” and “damns” blacked out. After parents, students, and media protested, the school eventually gave in and agreed to discontinue the use of the censored copies. The initial reasoning of this censorship was to dissuade the use of profanity in their students. However, according to Cursing in America by Timothy Jay, one of the leading scholars in profanity, the average adolescent uses 80-90 swear words in a day. Undoubtedly, some being much worse than “hell” or “damn”. It is not just in casual locations where youth swear, but it is increasing in the classroom as well. Students are …show more content…

An example of this is when the book was challenged in 2006 in Montgomery-County, Texas. A 10th grader was assigned the book during the school’s “Banned Book Week”. However, she stopped reading after the event of the Bible being burned. The parents were outraged and protested for the book to be banned. Their attempt however, failed, and the book was still allowed in the school. To allow a government-funded school to prohibit the distribution of a book solely based on religious intolerance would have been an infringement on the separation between church and state. Presently, to ban a book for vague anti-religious themes would not only be juvenile, but illegal as

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