Fahrenheit 451 is all about censorship and the bad things that happen to society when entire cultures are censored. During our class discussions we've talked a lot about the results of censorship but we haven't really talked about why the censoring is happening in the first place.
When searching for clues about the cause of all the suppression a very good place to start seems to be page 57 when Beatty goes to visit Montag and speaks to him about minorities in their civilization. He says the following:
"...Bigger the population, the more minorities...the bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean....books, so the critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive...There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them you can stay happy all the time."
The first thing this passage points out is that censorship did not start with the Government. It started with the entire population of people trying to make all the minorities within the community happy and unoffended. Books became "dishwater" so washed down and diluted that they weren't really even books anymore. People stopped thinking and allowed this to happen with out question. Therefore, it was very simple for regulations and cultural changes to be made by the government. And though people seem to be happy in their ignorance, their lives were actually very unfulfilled in many places.
Our society today is quickly rushing toward a fate similar to the situation in the book. We are so focused on not offending anyone that we have to constantly stop and think about what we say and do.This is not a bad thing most of the time, but sometimes forced regulation can have negative effects even if the intentions were meant for good. Words are banned from culture because they could have racial slurs if used in a certain manner. Art and literature are taken from the shelves of public places because they contain things that might make someone out there in the world uncomfortable. These uncomfortable truths are not things that should be avoided or taken lightly. Instead of avoiding things that make us squeamish when we think about them, we should embrace and learn about them. If we don't, we run a very high risk of becoming a society of robots and machines that do not stop to ponder the world as it rushes by our over stimulated lives, much like the people in the book.
---Taylor
This is thought provoking for anyone who slows down from his fast-paced life to digest the concepts you discuss. :-) This phenomenon of "tolerence for all," though good in intention, is perhaps dumbing down our freedom of speech and making us scared to speak out in the situations that are appropriate for such talk. This is certainly disconcerting. I'm encouraged that we have several sophomores contemplating the issue and its repercussions, for in that, we have hope for change.
ReplyDelete~Mrs. Stoller