ENGWR 302
Writing Assignment #3: Censorship Assignment
Requirements:
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Minimum FOUR typed, double-spaced pages
Your response must connect directly to your reading of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit
451, but you will be connecting the novel to a topic of your choice.
You may use secondary (“outside”) sources, but if you do, you MUST provide
correct MLA format citations (see links and handouts on Blackboard, as well as
your handbook, for additional help with this).
In his Afterward to Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote, “There is more than one way
to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” While
Fahrenheit 451 is fiction – in fact, science fiction –can we perhaps find parallels between
the story of Guy Montag the “fireman” and real life free-speech related issues in 2006?
For this assignment, your task is to find current (in the last couple of years to the present)
censorship-related issue and discuss significant parallels you find between this issue and
Bradbury’s story**. For example, just as the government employs Montag and the other
firemen to burn unauthorized books in an attempt to control what people know and think,
you might see the Catholic Church’s recent labeling of The Da Vinci Code as an “antiCatholic diatribe” and its subsequent call for Catholics to boycott the film version of The
Da Vinci Code as an attempt by a powerful entity to exercise control over people’s access
to information/knowledge. This is only one example; you have a wealth of different
topics at your disposal, topics you may find online (at The First Amendment Center
and/or FIRE or other websites) and/or in your other readings for this class, such as the
ALA’s list of Most Frequently Banned/Challenged Books and various news articles.
In analyzing the parallels between Bradbury’s story and your chosen topic, you might
consider some of the following questions:
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Who is doing (or at least attempting) the censorship?
What is being censored (or, what is it that might potentially be censored)?
What are the reasons given for the attempted censorship? That is, WHY does
someone want to censor the subject?
What is the purpose of the attempt at censorship? Is it an attempt to control
peoples’ thoughts and/or behaviors? To limit knowledge? To protect people? To
deceive? To indoctrinate? To avoid controversy?
What effect (s) does the censorship (or attempted censorship) have on the people
directly involved? On society as a whole?
What attempts, if any, have been made to counter/prevent the censorship or
attempted censorship? Who is making these attempts? Have they been
successful?
**Since this is a critical thinking course as well as a composition course, this assignment
is going to require you to put your critical thinking skills, as well as your reading and
writing skills, to significant use. Be sure to include specific quotes/examples from
Bradbury’s text as well as from your secondary sources. Find a topic that truly interests
you – perhaps one that even affects you directly. Most importantly, keep an open mind.
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