Fahrenheit 451Ray BradburyOne of the main themes of the novel Fahrenheit 451 is censorship. Censorship is n: the action of a censor esp. in interrupting the transmission or publication of facts deemed objectionable. This, of course, according to the folks at Merriam-Webster. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 theme can be seen from several points of view. Bradbury's novel mainly gives an anti-censorship message. Bradbury believed that censorship was a natural projection of an extremely tolerant society. According to researchers at novelguide.com, the society imagined by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 is often compared to Huxley's Brave New World. While both works certainly have an anti-government theme, this is not the central idea of ​​Bradbury's novel. More importantly, Fahrenheit 451 has an anti-apathy, anti-addiction, and anti-television message. The people in this novel are afraid of themselves. They fear the thought of knowing, which leads them to depend on others to do their thinking for them. Since they don't think for themselves, they need something to occupy their time. This is where television comes in. Television, in turn, leads to a whole host of problems: violence, depression and even suicide. In Fahrenheit 451, owning and reading books is illegal. Members of this society focus only on entertainment, instant gratification, and speed in life. If the books are found by firefighters, the books are burned and their owner is arrested. If the owner refuses to abandon the books, he often dies, burning along with them. People with interests outside of technology and entertainment, like Clarisse, are seen as strange and possible threats. Guy Montag lived in a futuristic... medium of paper... the most important reason that leads to censorship is the opposition of special interest groups and "minorities" to things in books that offend them. Bradbury is extremely careful to refrain from referring exclusively to racial minorities. Beatty mentions dog lovers and cat lovers, but that's about as specific as the book gets about identifying minorities. The reader can only try to conclude which special interest groups he actually has in mind. As the afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempt to limit his freedom of speech. For example, he strongly objects to letters he has received suggesting he review his treatment of female and/or black characters. For him such interventions are more or less hostile and intolerant. In other words, he sees such interventions as the first step towards book burning.