Last year for one of my classes, I did some in-depth research on censorship and wrote a paper about that research. My professor thought that this should be published but after contacting multiple periodicals and getting no response from any of them, I decided to publish it here on my blog. This is so important right now, especially within the context of libraries. Groups are pulling books off of shelves in libraries that they deem inappropriate. This isn't just happening in school libraries although the increase in banned books used for school curriculum and those removed from school library bookshelves is very disheartening.
Enjoy and share if you see fit.
Introduction
Censorship has taken place
throughout history. Whether it was the
censorship of teachers and scholars in ancient Greece, development of
censorship laws in ancient China, or censorship by the Roman Catholic Church
during the Middle Ages, censorship is nothing new. The idea of censoring materials or speech
continues even in today’s society.
Today, censorship takes place on
social media platforms, in colleges and universities, in work places and of
course in public and private schools as well as public libraries. A quick search of the internet will produce
multiple lists of challenged books. The
lists are quite lengthy with books ranging from Huckleberry Finn, to books by Judy Blume and even Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One book on these lists stood out to me
because of sheer irony. That book was Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I
found myself wondering how a book about censorship
could be on a list of books that should be censored. Having read the book when I was in middle
school, I could remember nothing in the book that would cause it to be placed
on a challenged book list. After reading
it again, I still struggled to find reasoning as to why Fahrenheit 451 was a challenged book. How could a book so mired in censorship, from
the censorship that influenced it’s writing, to the censorship discussed in the
book, be under consideration to be censored itself? Is there a benefit to censoring any work or
will censorship do more harm than good?
Influential Censorship
To understand why Ray Bradbury
wrote Fahrenheit 451, it is first
important to understand what his influences were. The early 20th century was a very
turbulent time in both Europe and the United States. The Russian Revolution occurred in the early
1920s with Joseph Stalin taking control of the Communist Party there. Censorship became the rule in the Soviet Republic. Books were burned and people were jailed and
executed there for having ideas that went against the Communist Party.
In the 1930s, the Nazi Party came
to power in Germany. Censorship and
silencing of people with opinions that differed from those of the ruling party
had spread to Germany. In August of
1932, the Nazis produced a list of authors to be silenced with the help of
librarian Wolfgang Herrman through the Association of German Librarians. This list was to cleanse libraries of 71
author’s works (Ritchie, 1988), most of whom ended up fleeing Germany fearing
persecution. The destruction of works
started in March of 1933 when the Sturmabteilung (SA) entered the Anti-War
Museum and destroyed all books, pictures and other pacifist material. The SA also completely destroyed the
Karl-Liebknecht Haus (Communist Party Headquarters) library. Everything culminated on May 10, 1933 when
thousands of books that were considered un-German were burned by students at
universities across Germany. This
activity was encouraged by the government.
Jim Ritchie states that the burning of these books was to allow a German
phoenix to rise from the ashes. As time
went on, the Reich Ministry of Popular Entertainment and Propaganda closed
Jewish publishers and bookstores. They
also censored such things as encyclopedias, schoolbooks and even calendars
(Krimmer, 2014). They also commissioned
publishers so they could more adequately control what citizens were
reading. By 1939, the Nazi Party had
come up with a List of Harmful and Undesirable Literature which included 4,175
works according to Elisabeth Krimmer.
Also, in 1939, more censoring was taking place in the Soviet Union. After a pact was made with Germany, all
anti-Germany or anti-Nazi media was banned in the country (Morson, 2017).
In
1940, the United States entered into the censorship arena by passing the Smith
Act. The Smith Act banned printed
material that encouraged the overthrow of the national or state governments by
force or violence (Moss & Wilson, 1997).
In 1951, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Smith Act in Dennis v. United States which was a case
against top leaders of the Communist Party. However, in 1957, the Supreme Court amended
the act and said that it could not be used to punish someone who encourages
illegal activity; only participation in that activity would be breaking the
law. In 1968, the Smith Act was under
fire again in Brandenburg v. Ohio. It was ruled that in order for the government
to punish a speaker, the government must prove that there was a clear and
present danger by the speaker ensuring that the actions would take place
(Field, 2018).
In December of 1940, a Hungarian
born author wrote a book that deeply influenced Ray Bradbury’s writing of Fahrenheit 451. That book was Darkness at Noon. It was
about the Stalin Purge Trials of the 1930s.
Many people in the Soviet Union were arrested, tortured and either
executed or exiled in labor camps. Most
of these people were military leaders.
In the coda in Fahrenheit 451, Ray
Bradbury states, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running
around with lit matches.” (p. 176). I
think in that quote, Ray Bradbury was referring in part to the influence Darkness at Noon had on his writing of Fahrenheit 451.
By the 1950s, the United States and
western Europe was involved with the Soviet Union and other eastern European
nations in the Cold War. The word “communism”
had become a dirty word. McCarthyism was
the rule of the times. Loyalty oaths were
required for judges and professors which, in fact, restricted their First
Amendment rights. Authors, books and
actors were banned and called to appear before Senate panels, simply for being suspected of being sympathetic to
communism. Textbooks were censored for
underplaying the, “good aspects of the American way of life, while displaying
all of its faults” (Mediavilla, 1997).
The government of the United States even went so far as to say that it
was okay to censor movies because they were a form of entertainment and thus
didn’t fall under the guise of the First Amendment (Telgen, 1997). Fahrenheit
451 was written and published during this tumultuous time of First
Amendment censorship. Interestingly
enough, the American Library Association issued a manifesto in 1953, the same
year that Fahrenheit 451 was
published, stating that, “freedom to read is essential to our democracy”,
(Seed, 1994).
Also, during the 1950s, communism
had taken hold in China. In 1956 and
1957, the government of China launched the Hundred Flower Blossom Movement
which encouraged citizens to express their views freely. However, this movement backfired on the
government when many citizens expressed criticism of the government. The movement was reversed and in June 1957,
many were accused of trying to sabotage the socialist revolution in China (Luo,
2020).
Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit
451 is a science
fiction novel set in a society in the future where the government controls all
the stimuli that the citizens have access to.
Most citizens watch government-run television which has become an
immersive experience, and when they aren’t watching television, they are
listening to government-controlled messages through what we in our current
society would term “ear buds”. The main
character in the novel is Guy Montag.
Guy is a fireman, but not in the way that we think of firemen
today. Firemen in Fahrenheit 451 don’t put out fires; they start fires, specifically
when they get a call that a citizen is suspected of having books. In this case, they burn not only the books,
but the entire house and sometimes even the citizen as well. Fahrenheit
451 was written in the early 1950s at UCLA, where Bradbury utilized the
typewriters in the library to type his novel.
The novel was published in 1953.
On page 57 of Fahrenheit 451, the fire chief, Captain Beatty, explains to Guy
Montag, “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. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag.” Society became all about appeasing everyone
so that peace could reign. This is
exactly what would happen today if we follow those principles according to Moss
and Wilson, “in the frenzy to appease everyone, books become empty shells and
no one cares when they are banned or burned” (p. 99).
Mr. Montag did not accept this
version of peace and serenity. He wanted
to live in the world devised by his friend Professor Faber where we are
allotted, “Number one…quality of information.
Number two: leisure to digest it.
And number three: the right to
carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first
two.” (Bradbury, 2018, p.81).
These two concepts sum up the
conflict within the book itself. But
conflict about the book was soon to
erupt.
Censorship of Fahreneit 451
Ironically enough, Fahrenheit 451, a book specifically
about censorship, was censored. The book
was deemed inappropriate because it contained drug use, foul language, the phoenix
myth and it promoted elitism. The book
was accused of promoting elitism because it distinctly favored literature over
mass culture and because it favored intellectuals over the common people. In the end of the book the city that Guy
Montag inhabited is destroyed. The only
survivors are Guy and scholars who had fled the city and lived in the
woods. They are proposed to save the
world because they had memorized books before they were burned. In other
criticism, Guy Montag was compared to Master Nicholas Ridley who was a Bishop
of London, burned at the stake in 1555 for his teachings. He was part of a group called the Oxford
Martyrs.
The censorship of Fahrenheit 451, started soon after
publication but reached a boiling point in 1967. Unbeknownst to Ray Bradbury, the book was
censored for schools in what would be known as the Bal-Hi edition or the High
School version. In this version, any
references to abortion were eliminated.
The words “hell” and “damn” were also eliminated. In the book, there was an incident that took
place with a drunk man. The drunk man
was changed to a sick man. There is also
a section that mentions cleaning a navel. That was censored to cleaning an ear instead
(Scraps from the Loft, 2020).
This version of the book was the
only version available for sale from 1973 until 1979. In 1979, Ray Bradbury was made aware that his
book had been censored and only the censored version was available. After voicing his displeasure with the
publisher, the adult version of Fahrenheit
451 became available again in 1980 and has been available since.
Due to the censorship of Fahrenheit 451 and other books for
schools, the American Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee, Young
Adult Division looked into the censorship of books by school book clubs in
1981. They threatened to strip Newbery
and Caldecott medals from any censored versions of books. This committee also stated that teachers
should demand that censored books be identified by a label stating that it was
an edited school book edition (Scraps from the Loft, 2020).
The censorship of Fahrenheit 451 did not end there. In 1981 Fahrenheit
451 was removed from the required reading list in a Texas high school
because the principal thought it had “too negative” an outlook (Hentoff, 1992,
p. 26). In 1986, Leonard Hall, District
Superintendent of the school district that included Mowat Middle School in
Florida, added Fahrenheit 451 to a
list of 64 books that had, “quite a bit of vulgarity or obscene and/or sexually
explicit material” (Hentoff, p. 378).
The year before, Mowat Middle School had been named one of 150 Centers
of Excellence by the National Council of Teachers of English (p. 378). The students were scoring very high on tests
and many of the students were found to be reading at a twelfth- grade level
even though they were in middle school.
Parents of these students were delighted to find their children reading
when it was not required. The school
board did end up overruling the superintendent and restored most of the books
to the schools within the district, but the principals and the superintendent
were still given the right to remove “unclean” books (p. 379).
In 1992, in Venando Middle School
in Irvine, California, teachers were forced to black out the words “hell” and “damn”
as well as other words that were deemed obscene in books including Fahrenheit 451.
Censorship Post-Fahrenheit 451
Censorship continues to this day
throughout the world. We tend to think
of repressive governments as being the main censors, and while that is true to
an extent, it is happening here in our own country as well. In China in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a
new call by the government of Mao Zedung to burn books along with the old way
of life. This way people would move away
from politics and put their energy into making money instead (Chang,
2012). In 1976, Mao Zedung dies, but the
old ideologies do not die with him. Deng
Xiaoping issues reforms in the late 1970s and when he is criticized, he cracks
down again. In 1989, students protested
for freedom of speech in Tiananmen Square.
That protest was quickly squashed by the government. Even as recently as October 2019, the
Ministry of Education of School advised libraries to destroy any work that
threatened the country’s unity or was anti-Communist Party Luo, 2020). China still monitors what its citizens have
access to on the internet and controls the media.
There are some who would say that
the United States is headed for another McCarthyism Era. In the 1990s, many colleges enacted “speech
codes” that limited what faculty, staff and students could write or say
(Hentoff, 1992). Most of those speech
codes are still in effect. Civil
libertarians across the country are calling for perpetrators of “hate speech”
to be removed from their jobs and have to attend sensitivity training (Amada,
2001). According to Gerald Amada,
“censorious intolerance for intolerance” is just another form of bigotry (p.
68). I believe that Ray Bradbury is
right. There is, “more than one way to
burn a book” (Bradbury, p. 176).
Conclusion
Supreme Court Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Jr. said in his report on U.S.
v. Schwimmer, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more
imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free
thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the
thought that we hate.” (Hentoff, p. 115).
Justice Holmes wrote these words in 1928 and they still ring true
today. Whether it is speech or writing
that is censored, nothing can do more harm to our society. Challenging or censoring books like Fahrenheit 451 denies us the opportunity
to discuss these books rationally and hear both sides and points-of-view in
order to educate ourselves. John Colmer
stated in 1978 that, “books create diversity and harmony” (Colmer, 1978). The very nature of the content contained in
books can create diversity by exposing the readers to views and experiences
different than their own, but they also promote harmony when we are given the
opportunity to talk with our peers about these differences of opinions and
experiences. When we learn from one
another and embrace our differences, we all have the ability to become better
individuals.
When we censor a book such as Fahrenheit 451, we miss out on valuable
opportunities to discuss certain ideals.
In the beginning of the book, there is a scene where Mr. Montag’s wife
overdoses on sleeping pills. This scene
was deemed inappropriate because it contained the use of drugs. People in this country overdose on drugs
every single day. If we remove this
scene from the book, we are denying readers of a potential educational
experience. If we don’t talk about drug
use and the harm that can be inflicted not just on the user but the loved ones
of the user are we protecting readers or are we setting them up for failure in
the future when they could have to deal with drug use as a user or a loved one?
Are we headed toward a new
McCarthyism Era? Are we censoring
ourselves and our books so much that, like the books that J. Moss and G. Wilson
talked about, we ourselves are becoming empty shells? And if so, will anyone care if we are banned
or burned? If we are headed in that
direction as Gerald Amada suggests, I fear that we are headed for
disaster. Censorship throughout history
has done more harm than it has done good, in my opinion. Not only are we denying freedom of speech
rights, but we are also denying ourselves the ability to learn and grow from
the opinions, experiences and points of view of those who disagree with
us. If we don’t learn from the history
of McCarthyism, we are bound to repeat it.
References
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