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Fahrenheit 451 Conflict

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Guy Montag is a brainwashed member of a futuristic society. He loves his job, burning books so that no one will ever read them. To him, this depressed and gloomy life he’s living is a perfect world- until he meets Clarisse. She shows Montag how to look up from the TV and see that he is not living the life he wants to. Soon Montag is called by his boss, Beatty, to burn a lady’s house down because it contains books. She chooses to be burnt with her books, as she doesn’t want to live in a world without them. Montag realizes that he can’t turn back because of the emotional connection he had felt to the lady. Montag’s wife was confused by his sadness, as he had never been so affected by his job before. In Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, …show more content…

Montag has had some conflict with Beatty in the past and he doesn’t completely trust him. The hero collected books for a for a month before the book begins, so he isn’t innocent. He finds a mentor named Faber, who gives him an earpiece so they could always stay in contact. Reluctantly, Montag goes to his fireman job, ready to burn some books, but isn’t happy about it. Despite all of this, it’s a surprise when Beatty pulls up in front of Montag’s home. “Montag and Beatty stared, one with dry satisfaction, the other with disbelief, at the house before them, this main ring in which torches would be juggled and fire eaten.” (107). Montag is nervous and weary, but he knows that whatever happens next will determine his life. The allusion to a show represents the climax that’s about to occur, Beatty and Montag waiting for the big finale. Whatever happens next will include fire, and it will be big. It doesn’t take long until Beatty begins to taunt Montag, telling him how futile his life is. This angers Montag, and he realizes that if he doesn’t do something …show more content…

Montag has escaped the city, now free but still in danger of being tracked by scent. He stops at Faber’s home to update him and change clothes. The government instructs the whole city to open their doors, so they can find Montag, an outlaw. Just in time, Montag jumps into the river, which cleanses him of the night’s events. “He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.” (133) Montag is moving, onto a new and better life by escaping the city. While he isn’t heading back to his unsatisfying home in the beginning of the book with Mildred, he’s heading to a new home and a new family. The river cleanses Montag, baptising him and preparing him for the next chapter of his life. After emerging from the river, Guy Montag finds a group of people surrounding a fire. He is relieved and happy. As Montag walks toward the fire, he realizes something... “...a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him. It was not burning, it was warming.” (139) The fire is no longer the destructive weapon that Montag had always associated it with. Now it is clear that he is not the man he was in the city. Now that fire is a life source, even comforting, Montag can move on from his destructive job of burning books, and into a new and more

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He begins to ask more daring questions to his Captain, regarding forbidden books and firemen of the past. Quickly, he realizes that these sudden thoughts weren’t products of his own imagination, but “a much younger voice speaking for him,” or the voice that belonged to Clarisse McClellan (31). Before he could further question the Captain, the alarm rang abruptly and the firemen were on duty once again. When they arrive at the scene, the homeowner is still inside house, unlike usual. Montag is hesitant to perform his duties, and is slightly irritated, because with the woman remaining inside her burning home meant that, “there was nothing to tease [his] conscience later,” (34).

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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.

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The author conveys fire throughout the story to symbolize the meaning of change. In Montag’s world, instead of putting fires out, they create them. In the book, Captain Beatty says, “What traitor’s books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and then they turn on you.

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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

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Bradbury portrays how Montag’s perception of fire and burning books with his personal development changes by the different choices he makes throughout the novel. In the beginning of the book, Montag has a great passion and

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In conclusion, throughout the entire novel, Montag continuously changes. He goes from loving his job, to rethink his job. In the end, he realizes that his job not only hurts him, but it hurts other people. He refuses to burn houses for the rest of the novel. He finally realizes that it is not good to burn other humans and their houses and

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Montag didn’t want to but complied, however he did managed to save some books he hid in his backyard. Beatty found out about Faber and threatens to harm him so Montag decides he have to kill Beatty. After he killed Beatty, Montag is

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He sees that damage that he has caused as a fireman and he becomes bothered by his society. This causes Montag to pursue change in his broken community. His beliefs about books are altered and he sees them in a whole new light. Montag realizes the importance of books and of knowledge and the impact they have upon the world. He gains an appreciation for the little things, similar to Clarisse.

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The book follows Guy Montag, a fireman who sets things on fire instead of put out fires. He enjoys his job until on one job an old woman decides to burn with her books rather than evacuate. Haunted by her death, Montag becomes confused on why books would mean so much to anyone. He then decides to find out for himself by reading books from a personal stash of stolen books. Montag has a personal revolution; he realizes the dangers of restricting information and intellectual thought.

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Montag lives with his wife, Mildred, and works as a fireman who burns books along with the houses that they belong to. For Montag, burning books was a pleasure and he convinces himself that he loves his job. But Montag’s character developed more as the story continued on. Events that caused a change in Montag’s personality was when he first talked with Clarisse, when he saw Mildred attempting suicide, when he stole a book while burning a house, when Montag goes to see Faber, and when Montag sees a woman kill herself along with her books.

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Moreover the fire also resembles the purging of Montag. Montag’ burning of his house and the TV signifies his rebellion and rejection of the vales of his society. Through burning his own house Montag like a phoenix destroys his old self by fire to be reborn from the ashes as a new person once again. Killing captain Beatty symbolizes the destruction of the system, because by doing so he frees himself from the influence of his society which give him the chance to think and choose freely for first time in his life. Also, another side of fire is also revealed to Montag ay the end of the novel when he meets the rebel group.

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Every single person on this Earth is currently facing a problem, whether it is life changing or minute. The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury touches upon each type of conflict a character can face: man versus self, man versus man, and man versus society. The story follows around a fireman named Montag who realized that the he and the world around him is incredibly ignorant and censored. Three parts make up the book entitled The Hearth and the Salamander, The Sieve and the Sand, and Burning Bright. Bradbury chose to organize the book into sections because each section introduces a new form of conflict, which relates to the titles because The Hearth and the Salamander relates to two different types of people and how they view fire, The Sieve

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He was moving from an unreality that was unreal because it was new”, (Bradbury 140). This shows that Montag finally found out for himself, what those books said and he stopped burning books because of it. The way it describes of how he feels after he escapes that world, he finally sees reality and knows what things are, rather than being

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Montag sat by the blazing fire, filling every bone in his body with warmth, the same fire that he ran away from. He watched as the red and orange tails of the fire flickered upward, sending a smoke rising high above the clouds. The same fire, in which helped Montag destroy books, homes and much more, was now consoling him. He furrowed his brows, attempting to connect the book of Ecclesiastes to himself, as he did not understand how the intellectuals became a book, when a hard hand came down upon his shoulder. “Well aren’t you as scared as a bunny in a foxhole!”

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Fire becomes a way to hide something. To destroy evidence. To shadow a bright thought in even brighter flames. Montag has been opened up to see past his own society. Later in the story, once escaping the city on the eve of war, Montag comes across a group of friends by a campfire.

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