What is the major theme of this novel? Why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2008?

When I finished the book, I was thinking, "Oh, dang! How am I going to do this? I have only a few days left, and I have NO idea on what the theme is." Then, I noticed a small note on the top of the book, that said the theme. Right there! On the cover! The theme! This will be easy. "It says... CENSORSHIP!" Okay! Censorship! I've got this theme down pat! Easy! One problem... What the heck is censorship? So, I started from scratch and tried to find out what censorship was. How? Well, the book! Of course! I searched for a theme... and I believe I found one.

The main theme of Fahrenheit 451 was, as I mentioned not seconds ago, censorship. What is that exactly? Censorship is, simply, the act of banning something that could be useful for one's enemy. Well, how does that apply to Bradbury's novel? The government and the firemen ban books, in fear that humanity will regain its ability to think. Simply, the firemen are the censors, and humanity is the "enemy".

But why in the world was the government so keen on humanity's ability to think? Well, some simply state that they just want everybody to have fun. What I think, however, is that that's a cover-up that the gov't presents to the peple, but really the leaders of the society, a.k.a. the government, wants to create a utopian society. How? By removing the ability to think and make choices that may bring down the society. And the gov't knows that if they can take away peoples' thinking, they think for them, making the government an emulator of "God". Yet, everyone knows that a utopian society does not exist. Everyone knows that nothing is perfect. So what do the gov't do about it? They get rid of humanity's path to thinking, books. Firemen are established, to obliterate all books in the world, and seize and arrest all who have gained the power of thinking through books.

So what is the gov't REALLY doing through all this? They do not realize it, but they are creating a dystopian society pretending to be utopian. This leads to a much broader theme than censorship. A theme that all the dystopia books have in common, and that's exactly it. Dystopian society, meaning, simply, a chaotic world. In the book, there's two forms of dystopia going on. There is the big one, the censors verses humanity and those who see the truth. But there is also another that is brushed through the book, and touched a little more towards the end. Going on at the same time Guy Montag is going through a life-changing period of his life, a war is going on, which, evidently, leads to the bombing of several cities, including the one Montag had run away from not a day before. In his change, he was saved. If it were not for the act that he had decided to do something about the firemen, leading to his criminology, leading to his running away, which meant he was not in the city. Then some think, "Yes, all the right people who see the truth are saved! Woohoo! *sarcasm*" But, no. What about Clarisse, or the woman that burned herself because all her books were gone. They died, and they were two that REALLY saw the truth. This shows just how much more dystopian the society was. The good guys die. Yeah, REALLY utopian, government...


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