In the book Fahrenheit 451, we meet an interesting character called Montag. This character’s occupation is firefighter. His sole purpose in the society is to insure the happiness and in turn does it to burn books. An unorthodox occupation it seems, however, throughout the story, imagery of animals is used continuously to symbolize characters in the society. Montag is characterized as a phoenix, an ancient mythical bird that dies and is reborn again from the ashes. This is certainly true in respect to Montag, because there are instances in the text where a new Montag is born each time. It starts from the incineration of the women to the killing of Beatty and eventually meeting the intellectuals outside of the city. Montag, influenced by Clarisse, was already having doubts about his own happiness. …show more content…
“Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. 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 that before.” He got out of bed” (Page 20). As you can see from the quote above, Montag has developed a new state of thinking and is questioning the society and the reason as to why they’re burning books. Montag was enlightened by the stubbornness of the old women and her self-incineration developed a new kind of Montag we haven’t seen before, a rebirth to the actual reality. In relation to reality, the killing of Beatty was an unfortunate one and Montag felt remorse, however, Montag used his principles against him when he was burning Beatty saying “Beatty, he thought, you're not a problem now. You always said, don't face a problem, burn it. Well, now I've done both. Good-bye, Captain” (page