Role Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury was alive during a very interesting era, a time period that included World War II and the Cold War. There is no doubt that his experience through these historically rich time periods shaped what he thought and wrote during his career as an author. His writings were inspired and influenced by the aspects of the historical events in his lifetime. Ray Bradbury uses historical content in his novel, Fahrenheit 451, to express his thoughts on society’s weaknesses. By using the novel’s futuristic society and characters, like Guy Montag, Bradbury points out the society's flaws.
One of the flaws Bradbury points out in Fahrenheit 451 is censorship. Censorship occurred repeatedly throughout the course of history. The most apparent source of censorship in the novel is book burning. During World War II, Nazi Germany burnt many books as a form of censorship, one example is when “university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books” (“Book Burnings” 1). Censorship is shown throughout the novel by books being burned and the job of the …show more content…
The idea that everyone is doing the same thing and agreeing on the same thing. During Bradbury’s time, there was a great migration to the suburbs in america. This emphasized the idea that everyone should live in perfect cookie cutter houses. Bradbury believes that people are “like gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues and gray thoughts looking out of the flesh of the face” (132) People are doing whatever they are told and are walking through life with no true emotion. In the novel, people are told to look out their front door to try to find Guy Montag, and everyone reaches for the door and opens it at the same time (132). The image of everyone reaching for their door knob and turning it at the exact same time appear. Everyone is doing everything the same, everyone is