Censorship is usually used to prohibit anything that threatens the security of a population but in Montag’s dystopian society, the use of censorship ends up hurting the population. As mentioned earlier, censorship is often used to preserve the happiness of the society; in this society it was believed in order to keep people happy. It was generally better to not “give [them] two sides to a question to worry [them]; give [them] one. Better yet, give them none” (58), meaning getting rid of conflicted decisions and thoughts would keep people appeased instead of letting them make their own decisions that would be based off “slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology”(58). Giving people one option would keep them from experiencing regrets and internal conflicts, which are believed to be roots of disconsolation.
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Eliminating books and literacy also eliminates tension and conflict, maintaining peace. But the restrictions that surrounded books became less of a government’s censorship and more of self-censorship and self-restriction. The firemen“the Happiness Boys”, were established to “stand against the small tide of [those] who [wanted] to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought”(59) and to push forward a book free society; yet gradually overtime with the development of “motion pictures...Radio.Television. Things began to have a mass”(51) and people made their own decision to restrict themselves from reading books. As people gained mass they became simpler and instead of being appealing as it once was, books became just silly words” [with] false promises, second-hand notions, and time-worn philosophies”(72). Through the use of censorship governments within Dystopian society were able to suppress the ideas and control the thinking of their population causing the population to naturally censor themselves as
Eliminating books and literacy also eliminates tension and conflict, maintaining peace. But the restrictions that surrounded books became less of a government’s censorship and more of self-censorship and self-restriction. The firemen“the Happiness Boys”, were established to “stand against the small tide of [those] who [wanted] to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought”(59) and to push forward a book free society; yet gradually overtime with the development of “motion pictures...Radio.Television. Things began to have a mass”(51) and people made their own decision to restrict themselves from reading books. As people gained mass they became simpler and instead of being appealing as it once was, books became just silly words” [with] false promises, second-hand notions, and time-worn philosophies”(72). Through the use of censorship governments within Dystopian society were able to suppress the ideas and control the thinking of their population causing the population to naturally censor themselves as