The Role Of Free Speech In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Imagine living in a world where you are not in control of your own thoughts. Imagine living in a world in which all the great thinkers of the past have been blurred from existence. Imagine living in a world where life no longer involves beauty, but instead a controlled system that the government is capable of manipulating. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, such a world is brought to the awareness of the reader through a description of the impacts of censorship and forced conformity on people living in a futuristic society. In this society, all works of literature have become a symbol of unnecessary controversy and are outlawed. Individuality and thought is outlawed. The human mind is

“If someone tells you what a story is about, they are probably right. If they tell you that is all the story is about, they are very definitely wrong.” (Neil Gaiman). This quote connects to how stories, are not just based off of one topic, but are based off of several topics that can all relate to the central idea or message. Similarly, it represents how others’ perspectives on what the meaning of a true story is can be different from others. In this case, Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by author Ray Bradbury, in which the protagonist and firemen, Guy Montag is required to burn and destroy books in the homes of citizens. Montag does not usually question why he does this, until he meets a fellow young

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury that depicts a futuristic American society where books are banned and independent thought is persecuted. Bradbury uses his imagination to take a hard look at a world consumed by technology, and he presents predictions about pleasure, violence and anti-intellectualism that are alarmingly similar to the modern American society. Notably, in both societies people find pleasure in entertainment that is endlessly preoccupying. Second, people are violent and careless. Finally, anti-intellectualism and suppression of independent thought affect both societies, as firemen ban books in Fahrenheit 451 and, in the

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, details a world filled with mindless entertainment and a lack of self-expression. Everyone is not only discouraged to think for themselves, but also fearful of unique thoughts and ideas. A quote from the book that would describe this is, “It was a pleasure to burn…with the brass nozzle in his fists…blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history…While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark and burning.” (1) Books, which would provide information and knowledge, are forbidden and burned. The owner who is caught with them is put in prison. The idea of a society run by one who dictate the rules, take away all freedom. These consequences for disobeying and being an “individual” are strong reasons the

Don't think, Don't read, hide all your wants and desires because in this society freedom does not matter. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, freedom is in the hands of the government, whatever they say goes or else you die. In this futuristic dystopian society, the novel Fahrenheit 451 portrays the government as power-hungry and manipulative, who controls the people from gaining knowledge through fear, intimidation, and technology. Bradbury wrote this novel as a protest against government censorship. In the government used many methods to control the people such as the mechanical hounds, burning books, and brainwashing through the use of technology. With these cruel strategies, the people cannot help but submit to the government’s orders.​

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury books are the sworn enemy and only thing keeping people from happiness. Since books take away happiness, people start to question or even shun them. Bradbury’s society has taught people to value tangible things rather than fictional books. Books aside, the society made other, less time consuming things for people to do with their free time. Since these activities do not require much brain power, the general public’s attention span has decreased greatly. However, other people take the discouragement of books as motivation to further preserve the classics. It depends on if they are able to see through the ploy, or if they get caught up in it. The effects of censorship on individuals and/or society in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 are a general distrust of books and people who read them, a very limited attention span in a pleasure-seeking people, and rebellion in the form of memorization.

INTRODUCTION. In my English class at Capital High School, we recently read the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and we discussed whether freedom is really free. In my opinion, I think that freedom is free, but it has its limitations. People always complain about not being able to do the things they want to do but it’s all about contentment. It’s all in the mind and in the way we see things. We, the citizens of the United States, are trained to practice our rights such as the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion which I believe is very significant to a person, but nowadays, people tend to abuse it and when someone tries to correct them, the tendency is that they would get mad and would answer back saying that they’re free to say whatever they want to say. I personally think that this shouldn’t be our mindset towards freedom. Freedom is free, but we should not abuse it nor take advantage of it in the wrong way. Freedom is important because it is a way of expressing yourself and a way for people to get to know you as a person that’s why this is significant to me. My main goal in this letter is to express and tell you my opinion about the abuse of our freedom by connecting two articles and the book, Fahrenheit 451.

In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, this society is very has a lot of censorship and government control because the people are narrow minded, have lost the thought of humanity in their souls, and scared of what life could be like with imagination. In this book people burn books because the government has banned them. Everyone feel sad and no one has opinions. This society is very different but similar in some way to our own today.

In the 1950s, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 with the intent to warn society about the dangers of technology and censorship. The 1950s however, did not present most of the technology that we today. Television was not created in the 50s, but this is when it became very popular for the average person to buy one. The first video recorder what created in the early 1950s. In 1954, the transistor radio become one of the most popular electronic communication devices in history. Little did Ray Bradbury and the people of the 50s know that in 2017 we were going to be able to have all three of these things combined into one small handheld device and that most people would own one of these devices. Already in the 1950s, Ray Bradbury saw something in technology and the way that it affected people that concerned him. That was over 60 years ago and technology has sprung forward in advancements since that time. Bradbury already noticed a trend in people’s need to be entertained and numbed through the things that they did and watched in the 1950s and he used his ideas of what the future would be like to serve as a warning for readers.

Ray Bradbury has repeatedly said how his book, Fahrenheit 451, is not about government censorship but just plain censorship. This can be seen throughout the book in the sense that the government did not have much interference with the way the books were censored, more, it was the society around the books. The idea is predominantly present when the characters within the book refer to the actors on the tv as ‘family’ by their own free will. “Millie, does”—he licked his lips—”does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?” (Bradbury 73). Also in the book, it is mentioned that eventually people stopped reading as much by their own choosing as well, further solidifying Bradbury’s announcement that it was not about government censorship. When looking back on the novel, one is able to see how the impact of TV really brought the society to shambles. Rarely does it ever mention the government or order of how things are, just hints at there being some unspoken rules within the society. This is the message that Bradbury had hoped to achieve with Fahrenheit 451, but unfortunately the message had not been relayed to most. “He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship” (Johnston 1). The author’s ultimate goal was to knock TV down a notch, not the government. Unfortunately, the original message of

"Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press (U.S. Constitution)." Throughout the ages, censorship has shown up in various forms ranging from printed works to television and the Internet. It can have the positive effect of protecting children from things they are too immature to view, but it can also have negative effects. Censorship may even suppress new and different ideas, keeping them from being made public. It may also set limitations, which stifle the creativity of authors and prevent them from thoroughly expressing their ideas. However it states the government should not censor the people of this country. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury the people in the town of Phoenix were

The First Amendment grants the freedom of speech for all United States citizens. Envision not possessing this right, but also not being able to think freely. If a future filled with no individual expression and everyone and everything looking the same came to mind, you were close, but not quite there. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is about a war ridden society that restricts the freedom of thought through the practice of banning and burning books. An analysis of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 displays change is needed because it opens one’s eyes which is illustrated by his use of character interaction, detailed events, and revealing the character’s thoughts.

Ray Bradbury comments the censorship in the future, even though this novel was written in the early 1950's by showing these same ideas in a dystopian novel called Fahrenheit 451. He shows the readers how terrible censorship really is by writing about it in his novel. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses "technological controls", such as television and seashells, to show the reader about how controlled the public is by the government and how their minds are being controlled by these certain technologies in the twenty-first century. Technology he uses are the Mechanical Hound and also TV’s, to show the genius the government has by feeding information into the minds of the citizens, in his novel. Fahrenheit 451 is a chilling example of censorship

Government censorship allows people of more power to have complete control over the people of the nation. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, government censorship plays a major role in how the everyday person lives their life. The protagonist, Guy Montag has constant struggles trying to hide his secret passion for reading, but one thing will always be the same. No matter how intelligent he becomes, he is no more important then someone that’s never read. The belief that even the most intelligent men are not important at all, comes from the idea of censorship in the government banning books, not allowing anyone to become more intelligent by reading.

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