The author, Ray Bradbury, uses Fahrenheit 451 as a vehicle for warning readers of the potential suppression which we may face in the future. According to Bradbury’s novel, suppression will be caused by a government or higher authority and will extinguish our individual freedoms. The following are some of the main warnings incorporated in Fahrenheit 451: the government has the preeminence to bully its citizens, and censorship has the potential to affect immense numbers of people.
The astonishing capability of government is the driving force in Fahrenheit 451. In this novel, a dystopian government practically erases hundreds of years of the past by doing just one thing - burning books. The obliteration of history is the source from which the human race is demeaned. Nearing the end of "The Hearth and the Salamander," Beatty quotes, "We must all be alike, Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other... (p. 58)" By erasing the past, the government is halting the development of a culture and, in turn, is erasing the future.
The other main theme in Fahrenheit 451 is the vast effect that censorship has on people. The novel itself is a protest against the "brainwashing" properties of censorship. In the novel, society is run by prohibition. It is through a lack of freedom that the government tames the instinctive creativity and curiosity of its people. The most prevalent form of censorship as found in Fahrenheit 451 can be found through the burning of books. By preventing people from accessing knowledge, the government is ruling based on ignorance. But is the old cliche, "ignorance is bliss," accurate?
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