Freedoms Surrendered?

In a world where freedoms are disappearing around every turn, Fahrenheit 451 brings up an interesting perspective. In the book, Bradbury portrays a twist on the typical view of the loss of freedoms due to government regulations. As you read through the story you begin to understand that rather in contrast to the modern day view of freedoms lost to growing government regulation, the society in the book came to a near unanimous decision to forgo their right to having and reading books.

Captain Beatty explains to Montag that reading breeds differing viewpoints, which is the enemy of peace of mind, he says. Beatty tells him that after all houses were fireproofed, it was convenient to give firemen a new job, “custodians of our peace of mind…” (59). This is how the transition was made from the idea that books were not healthy for a society to the ultimate surrender of that freedom.

This is an interesting contrast to the general idea of government wrestling freedoms away from us. As seen in the book, the culture forfeited their rights and only later, partially as a result of the need to reassign the firemen, the rights are taken from them.

In our modern world, a government would not be able to revoke freedoms without a vote or there would be an uprising. One look at the current state of airport security, however, and you can see that freedoms are slowly surrendered every day by our society in the name being a safer nation.

In Fahrenheit 451, the trade-off that we observe is one of liberties for peace of mind. But as you read through the text, you will notice how, although the society agreed with the idea that books are the enemy to peace of mind, the idea wasn’t necessarily a viewpoint that originated within the culture.

So who is posing the idea that relinquishing certain freedoms to the government makes us better off? Is it a general consensus of our society, or an idea promoted by the very government offering protection?