Figure of Speech. A figure of speech is writing or speech meant to be understood imaginatively instead of literally. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one thing is spoken or written about as if it were another. A simile is another figure of speech. It is a comparison of two things using like or as. These two figures of speech invite the reader to make further comparisons between the things being compared. As you read, try to identify examples of metaphor and simile in the selection.

• History Connection. Censorship is the suppression of speech or writing that is thought to threaten a society’s values. The term censorship comes from the Roman office of censor, which was established in 443 bc. The censor conducted a census, or a counting of the Roman people and their property for tax purposes, and was supposed to regulate the morals of the Roman citizens counted. While in ancient times people thought censorship was necessary, today most people feel that censorship is repressive and unjust. People first began to struggle against censorship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. John Milton, an English writer, argued against the government’s right to restrain publication in a work called Areopagitica, published in 1643.
• Adopted in 1791, the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of speech and of the press. While freedom of speech and of the press has been threatened at certain times in the United States, people have fought to protect the rights guaranteed in the First Amendment. Today, countries that censor speech and writing are usually considered to be unenlightened and oppressive. In the selection that you are about to read, the government censors literature.
• The title of Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 refers to the temperature at which books burn. In this novel, a totalitarian government has outlawed books, and people caught hiding them are visited at night by the government’s “firemen” who set their homes ablaze. The main character, Montag, is a fireman who takes pleasure in the burning, and has never once stopped to think that firemen are supposed to put out fires—not start them. When Montag does begin to question, and to think of the suffering he has caused, the machine of the state turns a fiery eye on him, threatening to destroy him, too. The book reveals the evil of censorship and the horror of a government that takes control of the minds of its people.