The Matched Trilogy Censorship In The Hunger Games By Suzanne Collins

In the novel, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, we are introduced to a world filled with spectacle and surveillance. The world where one male and one female from 12 districts must complete to the death on live television as punishment for revolting against those in power, the Capitol. With the help of a theoretical lens, we can see a thing we might not have noticed the first time, such as the purpose of the games, why do the Capitol and the districts view the games so differently, does surveillance end after the game, etc. Using Jeremy Bentham’s idea of “Panopticon” with the help of William Staples and Michel Foucault, we can dive in deeper into the book and discuss matters that were once not seen.

“A word to the unwise. Torch every book. Char every page. Burn every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.” Ellen Hopkins. The government in this society is burning all of the knowledge. The books may be burnt but ideas and your imagination are unretrievable, that can be passed down through generations. The government has the real fear. Censorship is bad and takes away from your imagination and creativity.

The media instills messages into society. They sometimes go out of the way in advertising or glorifying certain issues. Usually, a bad or detrimental message is packaged in a glorious way. Often times there is encouragement to act in ways that promote thrill and adventure. This way, media glorifies the bad aspects of people and encourages them to act in forbidden ways. The Hunger Games includes many of these aspects. For example, observe Katniss Everdeen in her journey as a tribute, a victor, and a leader. Her varying degrees of awareness, understanding, and manipulation of televised content accurately reflect how our own society responds to it as well. A focus on how much the media influences especially how to control citizens, whether it involves, body image, emotions, or in many cases violence.

The government censors literature in Fahrenheit 451 the most out of everything they do censor. Guy Montag very quickly discovers their censorship on literature. Ray Bradbury states “ ‘Do you ever read any of the books you burn?’ He laughed. ‘ That’s against the law!’ ‘oh of

When the government burns the books so that no one can read them and realize how distressed society really is, is censorship. It is also the allusion to Guy Fawkes. The government is keeping information from the people. Beatty tells montag how in school no one learned anything useful and how it is shortened. “Philosophies, histories, languages dropped” (Bradbury 53). All that happens in school is the kids watch tv, so there is no more “real education”. The people now do not know if something that happens in the news is important or not, because the people do not know anything about the world, or the english language, or the past. That is censorship because, the government has cut off all important information about the world that are in the books and have transferred them into the television, where the government determines what to establish on tv. It is dangerous to do that because the people like Montag,

Although books may seem important to educate people about what kind of society they are living in, the government in Fahrenheit 451 controls the information of what the public views by destroying books in order to maintain their power.

In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, censorship plays a significant role in the dystopian society. The novel illustrates what it would be like if the government had full control of what society reads, watches, or communicates. According to Bradbury, this perpetuates ignorance because society blindly obeys the government. Most people in the novel are unaware of their unhappiness with society, including Mildred, Guy Montag’s wife, who almost commits suicide by mistakenly taking an entire bottle of sleeping pills. Censorship has a great effect on the personalities and knowledge of the people in the society. The society is essentially “trapped” in a toxic world filled with ignorance (Mogen 105). The government feels by controlling all forms of media, society should be cooperative and happy; however, once citizens become distracted by the consequences of owning and reading books, unhappiness and chaos occur. Reading books promotes knowledge, which encourages people to think, but because of censorship, the society has become ignorant.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “That government is best which governs least…”. In Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury, the government puts extreme laws in place to “protect” the people. Except, that these laws keep the citizens from knowing the truth. The good laws like speed limit aren’t enforced and the things that shouldn’t matter, like owning a book, are so strongly enforced, that if it is you that is found to own a book, your house will be burnt down. The government keeps everyone in check by censoring the citizens. During the 1950’s, the entire country was in fear of communism. There was a blacklist of authors, actors, and public figures. No one would hire them or buy their work. Bradbury wanted to warn the country of what could happen if it continued being ignorant , and by using pathos, rhetorical questions, and repetition, he effectively conveyed his purpose.

Throughout the decades, certain restrictions have been shown in various forms from newspapers to television to social media. In America today, it serves as a positive outcome due to it protecting children from watching certain shows that they are too young to see. However, there are negative effects of censorship still prevalent in some parts of the world today. Censorship can block new and varied beliefs and ideas, which hides information from the public. Consequently, this is seen in the book Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury. In the dystopian society, many of the citizens daily routine consists of the act of burning books, watching manipulative “parlor families” on television, and not being accepted for doing things out of the norm. The residents in the story are limited to only juvenile thinking and actions which makes the society less diverse and knowledgeable. Even though restrictions can be effective at times, the author expresses the sense of censorship and how it is a bad influence by revealing certain characters that are affected by the restrictive society.

Imagine a society that arrests innocent people for owning a book. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury builds a world that firefighter’s burn down houses that have books instead of preventing fires from happening. In Montag’s society, burning book is a way to get rid of all the past knowledge because they don’t want their citizens to go against the society. In this utopia society, everyone looks exactly that same and they lack communication. Bradbury creates a futuristic community that doesn’t allow citizens to read books because they want all of their people to be content.

“Then, moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. He caught her, shrieking. He held her and she tried to fight away from him scratching,” (63). In the novel Fahrenheit 451 follows the protagonist, Guy Montag, and his interactions with society discouraging and encouraging his discovery of the illegal books. Along the way he understands who are the poisonous people in his dystopian world and who are not; changing his perspective to lose trust in his wife Mildred, from previous quote, and finding safety with Faber, a retired professor he came by one day in a park. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 the author demonstrates the idea that when there is censorship in the world, ignorance will follow because when a subject is hidden from one anything they do regarding it is under the impression of their lack of knowledge surrounding the topic, this becomes more relevant when Ray Bradbury acknowledges the emotions of people who have read books and whom haven't and their general opinions of them.

The use of censorship to examine and eliminate elements in media that are found to be unorthodox or radical has been prevalent in society for centuries. Through censorship, ideas found to be objectionable or offensive are repressed. In his prophetic novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury denotes the common practice of government censorship of books as a suppressive and marginalizing concept for humans because it strips them of the realities, truths, and meaning behind books and deprives them the freedom to deliberate and act on them. The protagonist, Guy Montag lives in a futuristic, American society and is a ‘firemen’; a group of men that deflect the old conventional purpose of stopping fires, to creating

Dystopian literature is often presented in the way where the main character has to endure the harsh and limited way of living present to them by the government, it usually explores the ways that the overpowering government uses their power to control their citizens. George Orwell’s 1984,Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Veronica Roth's Divergent by and Lois Lowry’s Divergent all show how the totalitarian government works and possible ways that it can be presented,mostly through the use of fear, restriction of freedom, isolation history, memory. While these are just the major characteristics presented in the novels , there are other similarities shown in all four novels which will be discussed later on. They show and warn the readers on

Utopia is often referred to as the “Perfect World” where there are perfect laws and people live in complete harmony without any problems. It is also believed that such a place is imaginary. Dystopia is an imaginary place or state in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror. In the novel, the government gave orders to burn books in order to control the citizens. The government thought that the content in the books may become a threat to their rule, they want citizens listen to their orders and obey it, so that’s the reason that why the government burn books, they try to control the citizens in order to achieve the perfect society, no one will revolt the government. In our society, the government

Thomas Jefferson once said “That government is best which governs least…”. In Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury, the government puts extreme laws in place to “protect” the people. Except, these laws keep the citizens from knowing the truth. The good laws like speed limit aren’t enforced and the things that shouldn’t matter, like owning a book, are so strongly enforced, that if it is you that is found to own a book, your house will be burnt down. The government keeps everyone in check by censoring the citizens. During the 1950’s, the entire country was in fear of communism. There was a blacklist of authors, actors, and public figures. No one would hire them or buy their work. Bradbury wanted to warn the country of what could happen if it continued being ignorant , and by using pathos, rhetorical questions, and repetition, he effectively conveyed his purpose.