Analyzing Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451'

Fahrenheit 451

Leah Kinzer

Period 1

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book that I had heard much about before reading it. I chose this book because I thought that it sounded like an interesting storyline and I wanted to read a dystopian novel. A theme that I found big throughout the story was that it’s never too late to change your fate. Guy Montag spends his days working as a fireman. His job involves him traveling to homes where their owners hide books and burning them to the ground. He enjoys his job and never questions any of his work until he meets a young girl named Clarisse McClellan who gives him a new lense to view life through. He goes from being a lifeless shell that lives for only others to taking risks and gaining knowledge

See the world. It 's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” I think this expresses another major theme in the book which is that the experiences you have that shape who you are are truly the most priceless in a world full of expensive material things. This theme appears many times in the book when looking at different characters. Guy Montag seemed to be more pleased with himself and the possibilities of the future once he stopped to take a look around and think about what life could be for him. He slowly learned what it is to live, grabbed his life with his own hands, and experienced many new things that help him grow his mind and heart. Mildred Montag was always wanting a new electronic and rarely strays from watching TV yet she was so unhappy on the inside. She never thought for herself and instead allowed others to make every decision for her without any question because she had never learned how to question things. Finally, Clarisse McClellan was a happy-go-lucky girl who was anywhere near as absorbed in the electronics as Mildred was. She preferred the sound of her thoughts or a conversation with another human to be the sound she heard, rather than scripted exchanges coming from a new television. Clarisse’s character was the most content with herself, had the most positive outlook on the world, and

I had chosen the book because what I had heard about it made it sound different from anything I had ever read or learned about before. I found the overwhelming presence of rape and prostitution very shocking because I had assumed that this book would be much more innocent, though I probably should have expected to read about young slave girls and even older women being mistreated by powerful men because of the way women were constantly objectified in the book.

When Wang Lung and O-lan were starting out with their family, they had to deal with poverty when there was a bad crop season and so they moved down south to find a new life. Later, Wang Lung considers selling his daughter to a wealthy household so that he may move back home. However, he had purchsed O-lan from a similar household and inquired of her experience so he knew what it would be like for his daughter, should he choose to sell her. He decides not to because he has grown fond of her and is surprised when O-lan tells him of the conditions that she used to live with. She says, ‘I was beaten with a leather thong which had been halter for one of the mules, and it hung upon the kitchen wall” (Page 133). This moment was the first time that O-lan had spoken about her past and her response seemed to shock her husband. This experience as a slave was probably why she was so accepting of being treated as the ground that Wang Lung walks on when he becomes