Fahrenheit 451

Today’s censorship highlight is one of the more clueless challenges one can find: Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Clueless because the book was written in response to the repression of the 1950s where conservative forces in society sought to root out what they saw as dangerous material. This included harassing publishers, pressuring book sellers not to carry certain materials, and even book burnings from time to time. Whether it was the McCarthyite crackdown on any political expression outside of the right-wing “mainstream” or comic books that were supposedly turning all kids into degenerates, the period was not an easy for artistic or literary speech. Fahrenheit 451 takes this to a future where books are outlawed and destroyed to prevent any resistance against conformity. And yet it has been the target of challengers from time to time. This challenge occurred in 2017 and sought to have it removed from use as part of the eighth grade curriculum. The reasons why focused on language and religion.

Books are frequently challenged for profanity. Here the challenger makes clear that students are forbidden from using profanity and, thus, it is illogical to provide literature that uses such profanity. To challengers, the presence of literature depicting behavior is an institutional endorsement of such behavior. In other words, the school is sending mixed messages by including such dangerous language. What was the language you might wonder? Turns out the challenger happily quoted the uses of the following: “Good Christ”; “goddam”; and “damn.” This language was described as “filth” that children shouldn’t be exposed to. Parents often criticize books for having profanity but usually the profanity is a little spicier than this — though I have seen a challenger that noted ever swear word in John Green’s Paper Towns including “helluva.” I have a hard time imagining many schools would even punish these phrases if spoken by a student. According to Robert Doyle’s Banned Books, one middle school in Irvine, California, in 1992, handed out copies of Fahrenheit 451 with this profanity blacked out.

The language was not simply shocking in isolation but demonstrated that the book was anti-Christian. The use of “Christ” and “goddam” demonstrated this. By juxtaposing this against the supposed protection for Islam, the challenger invokes the myth of an anti-Christian turn in American society. This is necessarily unfair and religious persecution. Of course, the challenger would go on to make clear that a censored version of Fahrenheit 451 would be ok if it was “able to relate biblical on how to deal with some of the tough issues.” This would be impossible because “we cannot bring religious thoughts into public schools.” The supposed persecution prevented any proper use of the book that was itself anti-Christian and, thus, the only reasonable use is to remove it.

Did the challenger read the material? They checked yes but then noted reading the “cleft notes and reviews on google.” They also discovered that schools in Mississippi and Texas had, at some unspecified time, banned this book. An interesting frame as most challengers do like to say they are trying to ban books, instead framing their action as just reasonable limits on access (see Emily Knox’s work on this). A school committee recommended retaining Fahrenheit 451 for use and the school’s letter to the challenger specifically noted that school policy always allowed a parent and/or student to seek an alternate assignment if they were uncomfortable with a book. This was likely unsatisfactory for the challenger because they know that their children are being raised appropriately, such challenges are about helping other parents do a better job. They want the school to remove the choice so that other parents can’t make a bad decision. Luckily, most of the time in my experience, schools and libraries refuse to accept this task.