Role Of Censorship In Fahrenheit 451

How does one know if something is right or wrong if they do not even know what the issue is? It is impossible. Censorship promotes the idea of ignorance for sensitive or offensive topics to impose a party’s agenda upon people. Ray Bradbury articulates this idea perfectly in Fahrenheit 451 through a dystopian society fixated on stopping the exchange of knowledge between people. In today’s society censorship is just as prevalent, and a bigger issue than people realize. News has long since been about facts. Government censorship pollutes the news stations, spinning fictional stories to glaze over injustice, or just to give their citizens the idea that they have some basis of security. China uses their news stations as a puppet. They promote

From the Nazi book burnings, to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, to Texas school textbooks, this is a huge problem worldwide. Within the Texas educational system, they have refused to admit the existence of evolution. Science textbooks within the state of Texas are skewed and biased, accusing evolution of being religious propaganda for atheists. Sexual education is not supported in multiple states within textbooks. While the idea of teaching sex is considered blasphemous, it is keeping children ignorant and can pose a danger to the spreading of diseases. While textbook censorship is horrible, the most egregious instance of censorship is the Nazi book burnings, an occurrence almost 100 years old. Anything viewed as “Un-German” was subsequently burned. Prominent minds such as Albert Einstein and Helen Keller had their books burned. As Helen Keller stated in her Open Letter to German Students, “You may burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas those books contain have passed through millions of channels and will go on.” Regardless of how enlightening a book was, they all were thrown into a pit riddled with ideas lost to the flame. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of books banned by the Catholic Church, was formally abolished in 1966. Prior to the abolishment, its 400 year reign restricted certain books from being read and produced. Consequently, the limitation on these books decreased the amount of ideas being shared, therefore promoting ignorance. While the books on the list were viewed as blasphemous, prohibiting them slowed down scientific and intellectual discoveries. Notable authors on this list include, Galileo Galilei, John Locke, and Nicolaus Copernicus. While the boundaries of authors are still a debatable topic, society is slowly becoming more