Censorship in the Future
When our Forefathers first assembled to write what would later be the law of the land for our country, it was impossible for them to predict that one-day; society would advance to a point where issues not addressed in the Constitution would be raised. Our Forefathers authored the First Amendment with the modest intentions of protecting a man's freedom of religion, freedom of choice, and freedom of speech. However, many people are now starting to argue that certain restrictions should be placed on these vague freedoms. The men who wrote the Constitution certainly could not have foreseen the invention of the radio or television, let alone the birth of the Internet. We are now living in an age where we must stop to question whether the First Amendment protects one's rights to create pornographic material, or read and write whatever they so desire. Rather, should such things be protected at all?Censorship has become the subject matter of choice for many 20th Century authors. It is a hurdle that they must face every day of their lives. In the fine tradition of modern-day writers, Margaret Atwood and Ray Bradbury write of such limitations of freedom in their respective novels "The Handmaid's Tale", and "Fahrenheit 451". Atwood and B
Atwood's tale is a terrifyingly possible one. Not so much due to the feasibility of her story, but for the way in which she tells it. She takes on a first person perspective, immersing herself in the Handmaid, Offred. By telling the story through the eyes of a woman experiencing the hell of oppression, Atwood enables the reader to better surmise how they would feel in a similar situation. The Handmaids live in a constant fear of illness, because for them, "any real illness, anything lingering, weakening, a loss of flesh or appetite, a fall of hair, a failure of the glands, would be terminal" (Atwood 198, Ch.25). In a society that strives so desperately for security, security is something only known through dreams of the past. The censorship in "Fahrenheit 451", on the other hand, focuses more on the censorship of literature than of individuals. In the future created by Ray Bradbury, the job of a fireman is not to extinguish conflagrations, but to start them. Technology has pushed out the need for enlightenment in this society, and thus books are an evil that must be incinerated. The story focuses on Guy Montag, a fireman who begins to question the sanity with his career, and with his society. Overcome with curiosity and disgust, Guy throws off the shackles of conformity and reads. This act alone condemns him, becoming a traitor to society. People he once viewed as friends are now mortal enemies. His own wife thinks of him as a monster, and Guy has no choice but to become a fugitive on the run. While on the lam, Guy comes across former college professors and other educated men who have been forced out of society to become vagabonds because of their headstrong refusal to conform. They alone carry on the knowledge, the hope, and the determination that was once so welcome in the past. Bradbury, following a format not all that unlike Atwood's, addresses our society's luke-warm interest in reading, only on a more exaggerated level. He sees the disregard that most of our society pays to reading
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Approximate Word count = 1350
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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