The word censorship cannot be separated from a scenario of violence and fire. Censorship is traditionally defined as an act coming from the Church or from the State. In the modern sense, it is defined as the use of governmental power to control speech and other forms of human expression. In the daily game of freedom and coercion, what is censored may range from specific words to entire concepts, and the ostensible motive of censorship is to stabilize or improve the society over which the government has control. Censorship is regarded as a typical feature of dictatorships and other authoritarian political systems. Some thinkers understand censorship to include attempts to suppress points of view or ideas such as negative propaganda, media manipulation, or disinformation. But censorship has also become known as a practice that may also give writing an extraordinary impact and credibility.

In an article on censorship and poetry in communist Romania, Adam J. Sorkin notices this inherent paradox – that the more censored one piece of writing is, the more valuable it becomes – summarizing it, symbolically, with the help of a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost. In Book XII, the Archangel Michael, before expelling Adam and Eve from Eden, promises that the result of the Fall will be something better for man in a future time, when “[…] all this good of evil shall produce, / And evil turn to good; more wonderful / Than that which by creation first brought forth / Light out of darkness!” (XII.469–72). The fortunate fall means that what on the surface is an irremediable catastrophe finally turns to good.