essay on the book fahrenheit 451

Enter Your Search Terms to Get Started! Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 Many things come to mind when the word “censorship” is involved. The Merriam Webster Dictionary states that censorship is stopping the transmission or publication of matter considered objectionable. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, censorship plays an enormous role and is noted to be the most important theme. Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Censorship in Fahrenheit 451 has a major effect on the society’s knowledge and characteristics in the novel. In the futuristic world Bradbury has created in the science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, firemen start fires rather than extinguishing them. People of this society do not think independently nor do they have meaningful conversations. They don’t even have an interest in reading books. Rather than that, they watch an extreme amount of television on wall-size sets and listen to “Sea-shell radio” which is attached to their ears. People drive extremely fast due to lack of appreciation for nature. “It was a pleasure to burn.” So goes the opening sentence of the Bradbury’s story. It grabs the reader’s attention and immediately tells where the unfortunate hero, Guy Montag, stands on the idea of book burning. Being the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 Montag is by no means a perfect hero. Montag’s faith in his profession and his society begins to decline almost immediately after the novel’s opening passage. Montag comes across a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the dark emptiness of his life with her innocent questions and unusual love for people and nature. Being faced with the complication of books for the first time, Montag is often frustrated, confused, and overwhelmed. He is often rash, unclear, self-obsessed, and too easily influenced. At times he is not even.
Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury American short story writer, novelist, scriptwriter, poet, dramatist, nonfiction writer, editor, and children's writer. The following entry presents criticism on Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). See also Ray Bradbury Short Story Criticism, Ray Bradbury Criticism (Volume 1), and Volumes 3, 10, 15. Among Bradbury's most influential and widely read works, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) describes the impact of censorship and forced conformity on a group of people living in a future society where books are forbidden and burned. (The title refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire.) The novel was written during the era of McCarthyism, a time when many Americans were maliciously—and often falsely—accused of attempting to subvert the United States government. This was also the period of the Cold War and the moment when television emerged as the dominant medium of mass communication. Within this context, Fahrenheit 451 addresses the leveling effect of consumerism and reductionism, focusing on how creativity and human individuality are crushed by the advertising industry and by political ideals. Traditionally classified as a work of science fiction, Fahrenheit 451 showcases Bradbury's distinctive poetic style and preoccupation with human subjects over visionary technology and alien worlds, thereby challenging the boundaries of the science fiction genre itself. The social commentary of Fahrenheit 451, alternately anti-utopian, satirical, and optimistic, transcends simple universal statements about government or world destiny to underscore the value of human imagination and cultural heritage. Plot and Major Characters Fahrenheit 451, a revision and expansion of Bradbury's 56-page novella The Fireman, consists of a series of events and dialogue divided into three parts. Together the story traces the emotional and spiritual development of.
Literary Analysis of Fahrenheit 451 by BradburyFahrenheit 451 is a futuristic novel, telling the story of a time where books and independent thinking are outlawed. In a time so unenlightened, where those who want to better themselves by thinking, are outlawed and killed. Books and ideas are destroyed, books are incinerated, where as ideas thinking becomes a danger to society and is not tolerated.Bradbury uses literary devices, such as symbolism, in which he portrays the thoughts of man. The book recalls the effects of the Nazi's, and their destruction of literature and text, in a new day and age. Symbolism is a key element to understanding the book and its message of anti-censorship and common ignorance. The Hearth and the Salamander, the title of part one. This example of symbolism suggests two things having to do with fire, the hearth, a center of emotion and heat. Whereas a salamander will embrace heat and fire to gain warmth. The salamander represents the main character of Guy Montag. Montag's occupation as a fireman is to burn books and text to erase their existence and impact on thinking. The symbol of a Phoenix is used throughout the novel. The Phoenix was a mythical bird of ancient Arabian legend. The Phoenix symbolizes the rebirth after destruction by fire. Firemen wear a crest of the Phoenix on their uniforms. Montag, after realizing the truth of his job, opens his eyes and sees that fire and destruction has indeed destroyed his newly gained ideals, he wishes to be reborn. With his new ideas of knowledge, he goes to Faber with ideas to save the books, and he hides books in his house. Montag even goes as far as stealing books from houses that he is supposed to be destroying. Phoenix is reborn only to get burnt and destroyed, again. Like the Phoenix, Guy's life is a cycle of getting burnt and rebirth, until one time the away Montag escapes and where Montag.
Introduction Calling Ray Bradbury a science fiction author (which is an inaccurate label) is commonplace. In fact, to pigeonhole his writings as science fiction obscures rather than clarifies Bradbury's work. The reader may find it useful to take a brief overview of Bradbury's fiction in order to sort out the various types of fiction that he writes, as well as consider various ways of understanding his work, rather that lumping it fallaciously into the narrow category of science fiction. Beyond Science Fiction The perceptive critic Peter Nicholls, writing in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia (Doubleday, 1979), is reluctant to place Bradbury's work in the science fiction genre. On the contrary, he finds Bradbury's themes traditionally American and says that Bradbury's choosing to render them [his themes] on several important occasions in sf [science fiction] imagery does not make RB [Ray Bradbury] a sf writer, even though his early years were devoted to the form. Nicholls concludes that Bradbury is, in fact, a whimsical fantasist in an older tradition. Humanist Gilbert Highet, in his Introduction to The Vintage Bradbury (Vintage, 1965), agrees with Nicholls. He finds Bradbury to have such illustrious European predecessors as Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1840-1889), E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822), H.G. Wells (1866-1946), and (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). Early American fantasists include Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and Charles G. Finney (1905-1984). In fact, Finney's Circus of Dr. Lao (1935) was a major influence on Bradbury's works. Note, too, that the only science fiction writers whom Bradbury consistently mentions are those whom he considers his teachers' — Leigh Brackett and Henry Kuttner. The literary critic and writer J.B. Priestley has observed that despite the fact that Bradbury is often identified as a.
Get this SparkNote to go! Study Questions & Essay Topics Study Questions 1. How plausible is the future envisioned in this novel? Specifically, do you think the author provides a convincing account of how censorship became so rampant in this society? Answer for Study Question 1 >> As noted in the analysis of the “Censorship” theme (in “Themes, Motifs & Symbols”), the future envisioned in this novel is brought about by many different factors that may or may not relate directly to censorship. This society is characterized by fast cars, violent youth, invasive television programming, intolerant special-interest groups, and so on. To answer this question effectively, the reader first has to combine a number of these fragmented factors to form the best explanation of this future that he or she can—Bradbury doesn’t make the connections for us. Then the reader would have to evaluate this explanation by weighing the individual factors. For instance, does it seem accurate to say that special-interest groups exert a great deal of pressure for writers to conform to one norm? Do television and youth culture really threaten to supplant reading? 2. Why do you think Beatty hates books? Answer for Study Question 2 >> It is obvious that Beatty has spent a considerable portion of his life not just reading but passionately absorbed in books. His facility with literary quotations by itself demonstrates this. The first place to look for an answer to this question is in his statements to Montag about why books are dangerous and worthless. For example, he tells Montag that books do not give definite answers, that they contradict themselves and one another, and that different people can “use” them to make absolutely contradictory points. Generalizing from these statements, we can infer that he has become frustrated with books because they don’t have one stable meaning. They are too complex.
Bradbury ties personal freedom to the right of an individual having the freedom of expression when he utilizes the issue of censorship in Fahrenheit 451. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances. The common reading of the First Amendment is that commitment to free speech is not the acceptance of only non-controversial expressions that enjoy general approval. To accept a commitment to the First Amendment means, in the words of Justice Holmes, freedom for what we hate. As quoted in Students' Right to Read (NCTE, 1982), Censorship leaves students with an inadequate and distorted picture of the ideals, values, and problems of their culture. Writers may often be the spokesmen of their culture, or they may stand to the side, attempting to describe and evaluate that culture. Yet, partly because of censorship or the fear of censorship, many writers are ignored or inadequately represented in the public schools, and many are represented in anthologies not by their best work but by their safest or least offensive work. What are the issues involved in censorship? Imagine that a group wants to ban Fahrenheit 451 because Montag defies authority. For the sake of the argument, assume for a moment that you wish to ban Fahrenheit 451 from the library shelves. To do so, you must do a number of things. First, you must establish why defying authority is wrong. What are its consequences? What are the probable effects on youth to see flagrant disregard of authority? (In regard to these questions, you may want to read Plato's Apology to get a sense of how to argue the position.) Second, you must have some.