Censorship in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
Censorship in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451
In Ray Bradbury's book Fahrenheit 451,showed a dystopian society in which owning books is illegal. The general nature of the society is based on destruction and emotionless, broken families. Bradbury conveys this world in a way that one cannot help but to read it as disturbing fiction. However, upon looking at our own world, we see our limits and standards for acceptable reading material close tighter around the neck of literary freedom. People are advised to not read books that have correct historical language or biography's with intense scenes of passion or rape. The world begs for violence through its media but scorns reading as if the message were there to ridicule and destroy us. Is Mr. Bradbury's fictional world strictly fiction or is it more like our society than we know? We will examine that question now.
I started by obtaining a list of banned and challenged books. Upon reading the list I was amazed at some of the books that were on it. Was the list full of horrific books of mass murder and sexual themes? One would think it would be. However, this was not so. Three of the books that shocked me were . . .
James and the Giant Peach by Ronald Dahl. Challenged due to scenes that were "anti-family." Anyone who has read this book knows that the "anti-family" themes mentioned are that James is abused so he runs away. Kids are abused in everyday life and James can serve as a hero to them, someone they can relate to, but some stuck up people decided to shelter their children from life's harsh realities.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. This autobiography tells the story of the authors' life. It is purely true, nonfiction. So why is it challenged, because of the description of a rape that occurred to the author. Parents feel that children should not read this explicit material.
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers. Challenged for offensive language, racism and violence. VIOLENCE can you believe that? Heaven forbid that a novel about war have violence in it! It is time that we let America's children grow up. They already see this stuff in the movies, on TV, in their music, etc.
Anyway, to find out other people's opinions, I first turned to Mrs. Andrasik, the main librarian...