Fahrenheit 451 Censorship Quotes

In Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Ray Bradbury examines the consequences of censorship and the influence the world without books has on society. Bradbury first brings censorship to life when society wants to set all people as equal and create a community where everyone thinks like one another. To begin, Bradbury first demonstrates that censorship results in a lack of independent thinking. Bradbury exhibits the idea that censorship affects individualistic thinking when he states, “Fat, too, and didn’t dress to hide it. No wonder the landslide was for Winston Noble. Even their names helped. Compare Winston Noble to Hubert Hoag for ten seconds and you can almost figure the results” (Bradbury 93). In the previous quote, Bradbury shows that the women discussing politics don’t have a strong interest in the
For instance, Bradbury demonstrates the notion that censorship controls everyone’s lives when he narrates, “Outside the house, a shadow moved…But there was something else in the silence that he heard…The Hound, he thought. It’s out there tonight…If I opened the window…He did not open the window” (Bradbury 45). Evidently, the Hound proves to be a formidable symbol of censorship and manifests the fear that citizens, like Montag, face under the controlling state of the government. In a similar fashion, Bradbury shows more of the vigilant state of a censorship when he writes, “[Firefighters] were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors” (Bradbury 56). Clearly, firefighters in this alternate world prove to be opposite of what can be seen in the modern world. In Bradbury’s fictional society the firefighters become the police and decide whether to burn houses down in order prevent the spread of knowledge and keep everyone on the same thinking