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  • Essay / Fahrenheit 451: Dangers of censorship and distraction in society

    “You are not like the others. I've seen a few; I know. When I speak, you look at me. When I talked about the moon, you looked at the moon last night. Others would never do that. (Bradbury 23-24)Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. The title itself is a symbol of censorship because that is the temperature at which books burn. In this book, the culture represented is neither happy nor sad. The censorship in the novel helps distract people into believing that they are happy and have everything they could possibly need. Citizens are glued to their “walls” or giant televisions and live lives in which nothing of value is remembered. The government censors everything to help keep society uniform. So no one will be able to defeat Chief Beatty with the knowledge he has. In this essay we will study the novel Fahrenheit 451, the themes of censorship and distraction used by Ray Bradbury against happiness to advance the plot and highlight the effects of a society that censors knowledge and promotes senseless distraction. Through censorship, society has been forced to have no emotion and no knowledge of past or future events. Another effect of censorship is that it has dumbed down society. “Instead of giving people the opportunity to think and pursue academic studies, censorship only allows for complacency and entertainment. » According to a quote from Beatty, "Stuff them with incombustible data, stuff them so full of 'facts' that they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information." . . Don’t give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things together.” (Ray Bradbury 61). In this quote it is explained that censorship creates the illusion of thinking which is why they must all think the same way. While the government censors everything, the citizens of Fahrenheit 451 have no idea what is really going on in their world. By distraction VS. Happily, the citizens were distracted by all the chaos happening in society, which always made them in a good mood. Distraction is a word used to describe something or someone that prevents you from concentrating. This makes it difficult to concentrate on what he is trying to do. On the other hand, happiness is a word to express feelings. When we are happy, it means that everything is going well and that nothing distracts us. Through characters such as the Old Lady, Montag, and Clarrise, you can tell that they are not happy by just pretending to be. Clarisse says to Montag “Are you happy” (Bradbury 7) because this is when Montag realizes that he has just been distracted the whole time, he doesn't know if he is happy. This quote shows from the beginning of the book that Montag is not happy but it takes him time to realize this. In the end, Guy Montag ends up being happy and living the way he wanted to live. Montag's wife, Mildred, distracted herself by taking an overdose of pills. The next day, she doesn't remember anything, but the day before, she had wanted to kill herself. That being said, it shows the reader how sad and unhappy she was because she wanted to kill herself. The quote about it is: “We live in a time when flowers try to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. » (Bradbury 83) Censorship and distraction vs. Happiness is linked because to have happiness in society, things will have to be censored. Both themes are important)