Censorship Is Wrong in Fahrenheit 451

“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it”(Mark Twain).  In the story, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, which is a dystopian novel, a man named Guy Montag, a fireman that burns books, realizes that firemen are burning people’s works of art and tries to stop firemen from burning books by any means possible. The danger of censorship is that it can cause a society to be left uneducated and can keep people from progressing and developing technological advances.

Censorship can cause a society to be left uneducated by banning resources that are considered wrong.  They could hold valuable information that can educate the society.  For example, Beatty describes books as “the pores in the face of life”(Bradbury, 83).  Since the books show the flaws of life, people can change what they are doing and learn from the flaws and prevent them from happening again. Censorship can prevent people from being educated because the resource that is banned can hold valuable information on a particular subject.

Censorship can prevent people from progressing and developing technological advances.  In the society that Montag lives in, “colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book”(63).  The people writing the books have just built the foundation to creating books that will not offend anyone.  These books were never given a chance to improve because they were censored.  If these books were improved, then they would not offend anyone.  W Censorship prohibits people from gaining knowledge and making technological advances.

Censorship can be dangerous because it can cause a society to be left uneducated and can keep people from progressing and developing technological advances.  The dangers of censorship lead to an uneducated society, and can inhibit people from progressing technologically.  Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates the outcome of a censored society.  If the same happened to the real world, the result would be similar to Fahrenheit 451.  If a society censors resources, the people may be desperate to find what is being censored and chaos will ensue.