Eller is an assistant professor at Northeast Louisiana University. In the following essay, he explores the historical climate that helped create Fahrenheit 451 and its protests against mindless conformity and censorship.
Bradbury developed Fahrenheit 451 during the late 1940s and published it in 1950 just after World War n and during America's growing fear of communism. During World War n, Hitler and the Nazis had banned and burned hundreds of thousands of books. However, the Nazis went further; using new technologies, they attempted one of the largest mind control experiments in history by setting up state controlled schools and a propaganda machine which censored all ideas and information in the public media. To make matters worse, after the war the Soviet Union developed its own propaganda machine, created an atomic bomb, and invaded Eastern.....
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