Fahrenheit

Our culture should not have censored material. I think that if you have censored material it is hiding away part of the real world. Keeping controversial and upsetting material away from the public eye promotes ignorance and stupidity, but I feel that sometimes there should be limitations for the comfort of others. Overall, people should become more open minded and except the fact that they are going to see or hear things they do not want to. I think if you do not like something, then do not do anything that has to do with it.

In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury he shows that censoring material causes people to become lazy and not think. Around the beginning of part 2 Faber says, “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores” (Bradbury 88). I think this is an example of how people become ignorant. When Faber is saying the book has pores, I think he saying since it has pores it makes you really think about what it is saying.

If people cannot read the books and just live in their own little world they will not be able to actually think about the meaning of things. Reading books make people think, why? When the firemen are burning all these books in the society, the people will not be able to think or gain knowledge. They will all have the same intelligence they did when they were 10. This is not the only example Bradbury shows. In the story, Mildred has a room with a 3 wall television. She is always in there and her family is her family in the television.

She is always watching it that she thinks it is reality. I think that her watching television all the time that is has affected her memory. For example, when Montag walks in the bedroom he feels, “Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside… a chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city could penetrate” (Bradbury 15). His wife is so sucked into this room that one time Mildred had kept taking her pills forgetting that she took one. Her brain has been drained by the television. She has not thought about anything else which caused her to have short term memory.

All she did was watch television and you do not have to think when you are watching television. In the You Have Insulted Me letter Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote, “You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive” (192). I agree with what he is saying. If there is hidden information from your children and they go out into the world, it would be hard for them to face a problem or challenge they have.

For example, if these parents had a child and home schooled her her whole life, it would be difficult for her to go out and be social with her peers. Also, if she had a problem with someone, she would not know what to do. I think this is just like hiding books from people. If you hide important information from people it causes them to be less open minded. In conclusion, I think that censoring material causes ignorance and stupidity for someone. If you do not want to see or hear something, then do not. Let the other person do what they want and just avoid them.

There is no reason to get offended if someone likes to do something or read something that you do not. I think if people were more open minded and less hypocritical I think we would not have this problem today. If you want to do what you want, another person should be able to also, but people nowadays do not think well because they are too into their video games or television and their brains just get drained out. I believe if more of the population actually tried to understand the meaning of things, we would all be less ignorant and stupid.