Officially,
I have sixty percent of my summer reading blogs completed. If percents are not your forte, I have thirty
blogs out of fifty blogs. With this said
I have twenty blogs and almost two books left to read and blog on. In this blog, I will tell you all about the
main theme in Fahrenheit 451. As I have said in recent blogs, censorship is
a big deal in Ray Bradbury’s novel.
“A censor
is an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio
and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of
suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other
grounds” (Censor). This means that censorship is the act of
doing what I just stated. In the novel,
Bradbury never tells us straight up why books are forbidden in the future. He tells us a couple of different factors but
that is it. I believe that the factors can
be broken down into two categories: lack of interest in books and the forcing of
people to hate books.
The factors
leading to people’s lack of interest in novels were the invention of television
and radio. “’Then — motion pictures in
the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass’”
(Bradbury 54). These things were
invented which lead people away from reading books. Instead they could just sit and watch
television or listen to the radio. Some
people think that reading is too much work so they just sit on their
butts. Authors and printing companies
took this into action and shortened their writings. This is bad for the people who enjoy reading
the original, full-length literature instead of the shortened versions.
The other
category is people’s hatred towards books.
The future became this way because the government programmed that books
were bad into the people’s minds. Once
it is in your brain, it never leaves and you do not know anything
different. Like in Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag burns books because they are bad and it
is his job. He did not know anything
different because that is what he was told.
"Censor." Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 29 July 2012.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York : Del
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