Author's Purpose in Fahrenheit 451

Author’s Purpose Essay In both Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and our world today, the government uses censorship to control the thoughts and actions of the people. Censorship is very immoral and terrible for humanity. Censorship keeps people in the dark about the government and its happenings, and does not allow free thinking and drawing conclusions for oneself because of the lack of information to come to a decision using one’s best judgment. The censorship described by Ray Bradbury in a futuristic world is not far off from some of the examples of censorship we see in today’s world. When the government censors information from the public and controls what people know or do not know about the government’s activities, it creates ignorance. Because of censorship, people do not have the information they need to make informed decisions about who they are going to vote for and why. In Fahrenheit 451, Mrs. Bowles says, “I voted last election, same as everyone, and I laid it on the line for President Noble. I think he’s one of the nicest looking men ever to become president” (96). Mrs. Bowles is saying that she voted for a man simply because of his looks, rather than on his plans of how he is going to run the country. There is very little rationale in that this man is going to be running the country, and all people care about is what he looks like. The reason the population does this is because the government censors out all the information, beliefs, and stances on political views so people do not know any better. The government censors out political ideas in the book because they want to control the information that gets to the public. Captain Beatty says to Montag, “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” (61). Beatty is telling Montag that people are happier when they do not have to worry or think about a problem, so by not giving them any information, it is