My Thoughts

When I first read FAHRENHEIT 451, I read it as an assignment for my Science Fiction class in high school. Back then, I didn’t really like to read and I especially hated being forced to read by my teachers. Consequently, I hated this book and would’ve given it a 1-star rating.

I was really hesitant to reread it, but some of my coworkers wanted to do a buddy read and I decided to give it another second chance. I’m glad I gave it a second chance because my opinion has changed. I still didn’t enjoy the story very much, but the overall themes of how censorship causes more problems than it solves are extremely important and make the book worth reading.

I thought the following quote pretty much sums up why FAHRENHEIT 451 is important:

You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn’t that right? … Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it?

… Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it.

As you can see, the “state” didn’t want to upset the people and because each book ended up offending someone, they decided just to burn them. I don’t agree with censorship in any form. I agree that there’s media I don’t want to be exposed to, but not at the expense of banning said media just because I don’t agree with it. I personally feel that if someone doesn’t agree with some part of a book, movie, TV show, religion, lifestyle, etc., then that person shouldn’t consume the thing they don’t agree with. People should be able to choose for themselves what media they consume.

I also don’t think censorship is the answer to past media that had questionable content (i.e. racism, sexism, bigotry, prejudice). Rather, I think that past media should create discourse about why the content was offensive and how to make current and future media more inclusive.