In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the protagonist and book burner, battles between the light and dark sides of society, first with Beatty, his boss, and the government and then with Clarisse, a neighbor girl and Faber, an English professor. Montag is stuck in the dark burning books and is ignorant to the world around him. He moves towards greater awareness when he meets Clarisse and is awakened to the wonders of deep thought and books. Finally, he risks his life by trying to save the books. At the outset, Montag was consumed by the darkness. He was a fireman who started fires instead of dousing them. Asked how long he has done so. He replies, “since I was twenty, 10 years ago.” (5) All the time he was, burning book after book, not knowing the full extent of his actions; he was totally unaware of all the knowledge being destroyed at his hand. He followed a set of edicts: “RULE 1. Answer the alarm quickly. 2. Start the fire swiftly. 3. Burn everything. 4. Report back to the firehouse immediately. 5. Stand alert for other Alarms.” (32) He never questioned them or their validity. He was a product of indoctrination, Montag believed everything, accepted until he met …show more content…
He read an actual book an epiphany. “Montag shook his head. He looked at a blank wall. The girl’s face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact.” (8) His short time with Clarisse transformed Montag. Her memory was always in his head, the aura she radiated forceful. With just one meeting, Montag already began to question his beliefs and actions. “And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I’d never even thought of that before.” (49) Montag begins to realize how wrong what he is doing really was. Books were powerful, Clarisse was powerful. Montag’s world was widening, his vision was expanding. Montag was seeing the
Montag began his career as a dedicated fireman. He was taught to burns books and he performed this task well, taking great joy in his life as a firemen. He loved the smell of kerosene burning the books at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. These were the books that were so vehemently hated. But this all changed when Montag met a young girl by the name of Clarisse.
In society, the government has shown that books were not a priority to the people and their lives. So they banned books from being used. This affected their actions and feelings towards people and other things. But when Montag met Clarisse, it changed how he viewed the government and its actions. Throughout the whole book, it has shown that his feeling regarding books did change.
In the beginning of the novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Montag was a slave to society. He seemed absorbed in the power of fire, and didn’t seem to think much else. Montag was the same mindless idiot as the rest of his society. Throughout the novel, Montag goes from a book burner to a book preserver. The other characters help Montag along in his metamorphosis, each in a different way.
Montag lived a routine life and like everyone else never bothered to stop or question anything. With the arrival of his new neighbor came the interruption of his schedule, Clarisse got him to consider how things work, how it affected people and life in general. Clarisse was able to get him thinking and through this he realized he was not happy, “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (9). Through Clarisse Montag realizes the absence of love, pleasure, and satisfaction in his life. With this discovery, Montag began to view the world in a different light.
In his community, reading was prohibited and books were burned intentionally. One time, he was forced to burn a woman alive because she refused to leave her apartment where her books were. Montag was so overwhelmed by the situation that he refused to go back to work. He was determined to comprehend why things had to work in so unpleasant way. Finally, he decided to steel books hoping he would find answers there.
Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about a man named Montag and his experiences in a dystopian society. Montag is a fireman and instead of putting fires out, he starts them. He destroys books and knowledge they possess. One day he meets a young lady, Clarisse, who makes him question his job and life. One day, the firemen are sent to burn a lady’s apartment.
This theme is a lesson that Montag learns should be applied to personal life and one's role in society. To begin this book Montag burns the knowledge around him. By staying with his wife Mildred and spending money on installing “walls” Montag was destroying his own intuition and
In this part of the book, all of the firemen including Montag received a call to burn a house with the books in there. Here became the turning point for Montag as he saw the woman, who already had made her decision to die rather than live in a world of oppression and restricted freedom of thought which books symbolize in this part, burns with the illegal books in the burning house, refusing to go out without the assurance of the safety of the books. We can suppose that his perception is gradually changing through the phrase showing that Montag felt a huge guilt over this, unlike the other firemen or Beatty. Furthermore, during the conversation with his wife, Mildred, Montag says, “We burn a thousand books. We burnt a woman.
Guy Montag as a Dynamic, Three Dimensional Character “Are you happy?” (Bradbury 10). This quotes is taken from the science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, which is written by Ray Bradbury. It encompasses the struggle that society faces as characters such as Montag -the confused fireman,-
When Montag reveals his hidden books to Mildred, she does not take time to understand them. “‘It doesn’t mean anything!’” (Bradbury 65). She, instead, worries about how it might affect her image if they are found out. “He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face paled out and her eyes were fastened wide” (Bradbury 63).
Montag quickly begins to understand how ignorant he has been of his own thoughts and desires. He realizes that he did not become a fireman out of personal desire, but rather he “ran after” his father and grandfather, both fireman, “in [his] sleep” (Bradbury 51). “In his sleep” suggests that there was no conscious thought involved when he pursued his career, as if the decision was made by his body without his consent. Montag’s realization that he chose his path out of obligation, rather than personal desire, helps him come to the realization that his ignorance regarding his own thoughts and feelings caused his
From one of his first experiences with Clarisse, Montag feels something that he realizes he never felt before in his daily life. He ponders to himself, "How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?" (Bradbury 8). What Montag is pondering about is how she behaved so attentive and natural towards
The word illicit sums up the confusion and weakness of the main character, Montag, a follower of the dystopian society, but introduced to a new way of thinking, but he is incapable of handling the contrast of reality and what life is really about. The oppression of dystopian society reveals when he is unsettled about his life due to several instances which make him begin to think beyond his ability and act irrationally rebelling to in an attempt to make changes in society. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury illicits a rebellion through the characterization of Guy Montag as he questions the direction of society in order to suggest the audience does the same thing. Unsettled in his life, the protagonist, Guy Montag is forced to question the status quo of his 2025 society which make him begin to think beyond his ability and act irrationally rebelling to in an attempt to make changes.
His contact with a 17 year old girl named Clarisse McClellan, an elderly woman who was willing to die for her books, and an old professor named Faber, help Montag start to question things and begin a transformation that takes him from the rule following, book burner; to an idea challenging, book reader
Montag internally conflicts with himself as he gradually begins to consider what books truly have to offer. For instance, “A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open… Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel… Montag's hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion, with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest.”