Censorship is prohibiting anything that is considered a threat to protect people from the reality. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, censorship is an important theme in the novel. The author Ray Bradbury creates a dystopian future with technology, dissatisfaction and loss of knowledge with the guidance of the government resulting in diminishing results which turns the world around and steers the society away from reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury constructed a culture that gained people’s consciousness with technology that conveyed their conception of the reality. The government in the novel uses rules and restrictions to censor the dissatisfaction of the false happiness the government is promoting. And in the dystopian future of this book, the world without books takes away knowledge from the society and stopped knowledge from expanding producing an ignorant society. The censorship is blinding the society from the actuality of the failing evolution of humanity.
In the novel, technology blinds people from the realization of the failing evolution around them. The televisions in the novel also known as the Parlor Walls turned people to believe that it is socially acceptable to live in a society filled with conformity, censorship and death. The parlor walls are used in the governments advantages but to the societies disadvantage. The government uses these TV’s to influence the society by brainwashing them with things they may find interesting.
“Thank god for that. You can shut them up, say. ‘Hold on a moment.’ You play God to it. But who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV parlour? It grows you any shape it wishes! It is an environment as real as the world. It becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with the reason. But with all my knowledge and scepticism, I have never been able to argue with a one-hundred-piece symphony orchestra, full colour, three dimensions, and i being in and part of these incredible parlours.” (Bradbury 84).
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The words Faber show how the parlor walls are unable to speak to citizens minds the way books can. The government uses the parlour walls to also influence people to believe that the people inside their parlours care about them like Mildred. “That’s my family”(Bradbury 49). The parlour TV’s use media to influence the insanity of society by giving them joy to distract the from what is happening in the world around them. The media misleads the society to believe that they are comfortable living in a society full of censorship that is believed to be a norm in the society. “So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless” (Bradbury 83). This explains confirms what the media has told the society, that they are comfortable with what they are use to. People in the Fahrenheit 451 society are used to listening to the Parlour walls . Therefore when the media voices something dreadful about books, the citizens believe it because it is what they are comfortable with. In this novel, Ray Bradbury displays the dehumanizing nature and influence of technology in a futuristic society.
The Hound is an example of technology created by the government that represents the threat and damaging nature of new technology in Fahrenheit 451. “‘No, no, boy’ said Montag, his heart pounding. He saw the silver needle extended upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growl simmered in the beast and it looked at him.” (Bradbury 25-26). The hound represents one way technology was adapted to develop into a destructive rather than beneficial piece of technology that is given animal-like qualities. “They had this machines. They had two machines really. One of them slide down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time fathered there” (Bradbury 14). The mechanical hounds are programmed to function as it was a living being with no thoughts or motives. “The mechanical hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse” (Bradbury 24). The mechanical hounds symbolize the fear of technology and the threat it poses to the culture. “Montag slid down the pole like a man in a dream. The Mechanical Hound leapt up in its kennel, its eyes all green flame” (Bradbury 25). The Mechanical Hound as a whole represents a threat to the culture in dystopian future of the novel Fahrenheit 451 where the Mechanical Hound are used for killings which demonstrate the atrocity of the government and new technology.
Technology was used to shift citizens notion by censoring media that is considered unsuitable for the community to distract citizens from the world around them while hindering citizens as individuals. The media that the society considered suitable hindered the way individuals were shaped and their social interactions which are both negative effects of technology in Fahrenheit 451’s futuristic world. “How long do you figure before, we save up and get the fourth wall torn our and a fourth wall-TV put in? It’s only two thousand dollar” (Bradbury 20). Mildreds aspiration for a fourth parlor wall shows her priorities when technology is involved. Once technology comes into play, that is all citizens are focused on and that is what citizens will spend their time doing. “‘Let me alone.’ said Mildred. ‘I didn’t do anything’ ‘Let you alone!’ That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, something real?” (Bradbury 52). Mildred is so consumed with the technology around that Mildreds only wish is to be left alone and a desire to be unsocial. “No one has the time anymore for anything else.” (Bradbury 21). People are developing and developing a desire to be unsocial. The media is hindering citizens as individuals in the sense of relationships, communication and want for more technology.
The government uses rules and restrictions to censor the dissatisfaction of false happiness. The government created an illusion of happiness where rules and restrictions were used to suppress the dissatisfaction of deceitful happiness. “Felt was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono-colour walls, speaking, but the speech not piercing the crystal carrier” (Bradbury 46). The protagonist, Montage is unable to express himself in his own home. And to be able to be content people need to express themselves however this cannot be done in Montag’s society and in his lonely marriages with the governments restrictions.
“More sports for everyone, group spirit, fun, and you don’t have to think, eh? Organize and organize and super organize super-super sports. More cartoons in books. More pictures. The mind drinks less and less. Impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turn into motels, people in nomadic surges from place to place, following the moon tides, living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before.” (Bradbury 57). This hints at the dissatisfaction that the citizens are experiencing. The government is hiding the false happiness rather than fixing the dissatisfaction. “I’m so damned unhappy. I’m so mad, and I don’t know why.” (Bradbury 64). On numerous occasions Montag the protagonist expressed his dissatisfaction with his life around the rules and restrictions created by the government. The mirage created by the government hid the dissatisfaction as a whole and it is that simple as little to nobody know anything else other than what is being ordered of them.
The government made reading prohibited which makes people accept anything that is being ordered. “Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames” (Bradbury 8). The firemen have been instructed to burn houses that contain books, as they are prohibited. Reading has been prohibited and if books are seen, the book will be burnt to continue allowing the government to control the thoughts of the community. “I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.” (Bradbury 82). Being ordered to not violate rules of the society brings Mildred the urge to turn Montag in to the authorities. “Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor. He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was paled out and her eyes were fastened wide. She said his name over, twice, three times. Then, moaning, she ran forward , seized the book, and ran toward the kitchen incinerator. (Bradbury 66). The government in the novel Fahrenheit 451 had a set way on how the society is to function and there are no exceptions for anyone who acted against the orders.
The government has fighted rebellion with what is known to be happiness in the futuristic society. “Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which building are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it’s a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, life myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than ‘Mr. Gimmick’ and the parlour ‘families’? If you can, you’ll win your way, Montag. In any event, you’re a fool. People are having fun.” (Bradbury 87).
The government used the strategy of fighting rebellion with happiness. The government fights rebellion or what had been considered atypical in the society by punishing those who are considered different. “My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. […] My uncle was arrested another time – did I tell you? – for being a pedestrian. Oh, we’re most peculiar!” (Bradbury 9-10).
Citizens are being misinformed by the government and being manipulated by the government to believe that whatever information given is valid. “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag” (Bradbury 61). The government interferes the citizens right to be informed of things which interferes with the judgement rights of each civilian. The government prevents oneself from reaching the truths of the society. Books are forbidden which puts a halt to the learning and information the society is receiving. Citizens believe that books are offensive and burning the “offensive” material will benefit the civilisation of their world. “Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lung? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book” (Bradbury 59).
Ignorance is created and developed in the society due to the government’s power. The strong desire the government has to hold power over the citizens creates a manipulated truth. “But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last” (Bradbury 146). The government manipulates people to believe that what they are doing is right and that there is no reasons to ask questions. The information the government is feeding the society and the invalid information that the government wants to make known to the society misinforms the world causing the development of ignorance.
Those who wish to expand their knowledge are punished or put into jail because they are considered a threat. This is now the lifestyle and world the citizens live in, a world where they are not able to expand their knowledge. “His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks” (Bradbury 78). Montag had a desire of knowledge and because of his inability to retain information frustrated him. With the loss of knowledge, it limits one’s critical thinking and intelligence. “But our way is simplet and, we think, better. All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we need intact and safe. We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good” (Bradbury 152). It is important for the citizens to maintain what little knowledge that remains apart of them before there is no knowledge left in the ignorant society they originate. “The mask was a think on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” (Golding 66). The mask in this citation from Lord of the Flies by William Golding shows the eagerness Jack shows to accepts his ignorance that he has no desire to change. Similar to Ray Bradbury’s society, citizens who have the option to change the status quo have no desire due to the fear of the unknown. Citizens fear change to what is considered a social norm in the society that they have experienced with a fear of consequences and punishment.
Citizens are unable to learn from past mistakes because they do not exist. Because of the ignorance in the society, mistakes becomes unnoticed as if mistakes do not exist and ignorance is developed. “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. […] A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.” (Bradbury 58). The knowledge within a book is similar to a loaded gun where ignorance is the base of the society created by author Ray Bradbury. Citizens shy away from anything different from the norm in the society. “It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. […] It’s a mystery. […] Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. […] clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.” (Bradbury 115). This shows those who are deliberately becoming ignorant due to a fear of knowledge and anything that is different from their everyday norm.
“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly to earth? But when he was held, rootless, in midair, by Hercules, her perishes easily.” (Bradbury 79).
With nobody in the society of the future dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451 growing and striving to gain more knowledge, this creates more ignorance and the people of the society will continue to live like mindless beings under the manipulation of the government
In conclusion, Ray Bradbury the author of the novel Fahrenheit 451, created a futuristic dystopian world where under government control, technology, dissatisfaction and loss of knowledge were causing diminishing results that steered the world away from reality into an ignorant society. Ray Bradbury constructed a culture that influenced technology in the confines of a futuristic society gaining people’s attentions conveying the true meaning of reality. The government in the novel uses rules and restrictions to censor the dissatisfaction of the false happiness the government is promoting. And in the dystopian future of this book, the world without books takes away knowledge from the society and stopped knowledge from expanding producing an ignorant society with the manipulation of the government. The censorship is blinding the mindless citizens in the society from the actuality of the failing evolution of humanity.
