Farenheit 451 Is the Story

Farenheit 451 is the story of societal censorship gone awry. No longer are books available for pleasurable reading, instead members of society are bombarded with governmental programming that takes the place of books. The programming is broadcast through a variety of media including 'television walls' that blare propagandized sitcoms twenty-four hours a day. The situation has gotten so bad that firemen in the story don't put out fires, they start them, and fuel for the fires are the books that have been banned. Because books have been banned, society is no longer allowed the capability of teaching children from books. This situation spirals out of control as evidenced by the way members of society, young and old alike, are continually searching for gratification rather than knowledge. The citizens seem to be okay with the situation as it is, though it is disturbing to some, including the protagonist of the story, Montag. Montag is a fireman who questions the need for societal banning of books even though censorship has taken place in real America for decades. One recent article wrote "activists campaigned for federal, state and local censorship and consumer boycotts of the movies arguing that youth, women, and rural citizens were particularly vulnerable to the corrupting influences of the cinema" (Anderson 349). This is an ironic statement in that in Farenheit 451 the government employs 'the corrupting influences of the cinema' to maintain a certain degree of control over the citizens.

As the story progresses, Montag realizes that there is something morally wrong with what is being broadcast by the government, but essentially was in a quandary as to what to do about it. Late in the book he tells his mentor, Faber, "I was saving something up, I went around doing one thing and feeling another" (Bradbury 131). This action of doing one thing and feeling another is a perfect statement regarding how censorship can thrive in a community. In Farenheit 451 the citizens allowed the government the freedom to burn books, they did this by not speaking out at the initiation of such actions. Faber tells Montag "I said nothing. I'm one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty', but I did not speak and thus became 'guilty' myself" (Bradbury 82). When good citizens quail in the face of attempted censorship, then censorship will thrive. Without the knowledge blocked by the censors, the citizenry will flounder under the thumb of oppression. The characters in the book who meet Montag after his escape from the city know this is true. Granger, one of the leaders of the group tells Montag, "All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe" (Bradbury 152). The message seems to be that ultimately such censorship will lead to the entire downfall of a society and this is starkly evidenced by events in the book observed by Montag, and it takes just one sentence. Bradbury writes, "Montag saw the flirt of a great metal fist over the far city and he knew the scream of the jets that would follow, would say, after the deed, disintegrate, leave no stone on another, perish. Die" (158). With those words, society is obliterated.