NVA

Forbidden Books

Feb 20, 2015

Fahrenheit 451

What happens when a book is made about censorship and ends up being censored itself? Well,  you would get Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, written in 1953. This book takes place in the future, around the 24th century after 2 nuclear wars that started in the 1990s. The theme of this book is censorship, and how it plays a big role in our world; also, it’s about how every time we censor something it is soon taken over by people who aren’t in a dream world. The book’s main character is Guy Montag, and it shows how he actually is like Socrates, like a gadfly. Guy Montag acts as a gadfly, by annoying people with his persistence to get people to wake up from their dreamland, and to see that the government is doing wrong by making them all the same.

Among others, Guy Montag never started out as a gadfly/rebel. He was one of the firemen who burned books so people wouldn’t use them to gain knowledge. He was actually a part of the government and their rules,  never thinking about himself ever becoming a gadfly. This was until he met Clarisse; she was someone who was born into a family who are rebels in the book. Clarisse was a girl who Guy really liked, because she opened up a new world for him. By opening up a new world, this showed when Guy started to become a gadfly in the book. When she did started to open up his world, he started to ask more questions. After asking him several other questions about his job when they first met, Clarisse asks, “Do you ever read any of the books you burn?” (Bradbury 8) This has such a big impact on Guy, only because he had never asked that question before, and he wanted to soon learn more of why they don’t. From asking so many questions, Guy soon just starts to wonder a little too about them. Actually really in the beginning Clarisse is the gadfly to Guy, and he soon takes on the torch. 

As the book goes on, Guy finds out by his wife that Clarisse was killed, and her family was soon taken, making Guy take more of a leap towards being a gadfly. This upset him greatly, and to start his journey towards being a true gadfly, he starts to ask more questions about his world/reality. In the book, Guy asks his Captain, Beatty, why firemen burn books. Beatty explains, “Once books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of pastepudding norm, do you follow me?” (Bradbury 54). This was an interesting quote to find, because it shows how even the captain saw how the world was different, and it changed, and not for the better. When this happens, Guy finally realizes the world he is living in isn’t a good one, and this was the point where he woke up from his dreamland.

Finally, Guy can’t handle it anymore, and he later steals a book to find out more on what was being hidden from him, and his shows how he made the transition to a true gadfly. He stole the book when his team and he went to burn down the house of an old lady who had a bunch of banned books in her house. He quickly stole one when they were piling up the books to burn. When he did this he found out he had taken the Bible. So to find more knowledge he went to meet Faber, a man who had a lot of knowledge on books. Faber showed him more knowledge on books, and they started to talk more on the troubles with government. Guy started to act more as a gadfly after meeting him, because then he would annoy the people around him more. He also started to think of new ways they could take over the government. By doing this he raised question of whether his team needed to arrest him or not. Later on in the book as he was raising more questions, people started to go at him by trying to arrest him, and he had to kill his team to get away from them. Him killing his team was his huge transition from a regular person to rebel, who didn’t like anything about the world he was in. So Guy ran away, and soon met went to Faber's house, asking what he should do, and if he the right thing. Faber replies,  “I’ve  been a fool all down the line, can’t stay long. I’m on my way to God knows where.” Guy says. At least you were a fool about the right things” replies Faber to Guy (Bradbury 130). This was a good interaction for Guy, because it shows how after killing people Guy is still a good person, and Faber makes him realize that he is doing the right thing by running, and that his world is now different. The book ends with Guy meeting up with a bunch of rebels, and he finds out everyone has a book in their head that they have memorized, and that they can use his book that he remembered as a copy if the other person with the same book dies.

In the case of censorship, this book focuses on censorship generally, but was censored itself. This book was censored because it contained bad language, and had scenes that could be seen as offensive. The censorship was done to protect the youth from the information in the book.  (“Banned Books That Shaped America” 8th) I would say that this censorship wasn’t justified at all, they censored very minor curse words. My old teacher would give us books to read, and those books would contain profanity, and he said it was fine, because it was literature and that it’s better to have swears in it. 

Overall, Fahrenheit 451 was really well written, it had a lot of interesting views on the world. Since this book was made after a war and the beginning of a new one, it is interesting to see how people would think of how our world could turn out. In this book, there were a couple gadflies, the first was Clarisse, because she opened everything up for Guy. Then Guy took her message and became a new man, finding himself being a main rebel to the government. This is a must read book, because it will give you some cool thoughts on how books are more important than we can actually realize. Also a main takeaway is that everyone can be a gadfly, and those are the people that do stuff that some people are too scared to do.

Works Cited:

“Banned Books That Shaped America” Banned Books Week. 2015 . (8th paragraph)

Bradbury, Ray (1991) Fahrenheit 451. Published by Ballantine Books.