Many people are victims of their own society.slaves to it even. However, some break their chains and live their lives in independent defiance of their oppressive society. Montag, the leading protagonist from a dystopian futuristic novel where firemen burn books, undergoes major character alterations throughout the novel. In the beginning, Montag is a ‘model citizen’, one who never thinks beyond the realm of his society’s collective mind, but after meeting Clarisse Mcclellan as well as seeing how his own wife is a slave herself, he develops rebellious and independent thinking and begins functioning as the individual he is. After being asked by his strange neighbor girl, Clarisse Mcclellan “are you happy?”, Montag lies awake at night as he realizes “he was not happy”, and that “he wore his happiness like a mask”(17). …show more content…
This woman chose to die and burn with her books rather than leave them and live. This floods Montag with guilt and leaves him with unanswered questions about just what about these books is worth dying for. One day at the firehouse, Montag looks at a list of banned books on the burn list and describes that “their names leapt in fire, burning down the years under his axe and his hose which sprayed not water but kerosene” (31). As Montag reflects on the countless books he has burned and the true history of firemen, he becomes horrified and angered by his own ignorance of the value of the books he's been destroying. While laying in separate beds in their bedroom before going to sleep, Montag feels that ‘suddenly this woman [his wife] was so strange he couldn’t believe he knew her at all” (39). Montag realizes he feels his own wife is a stranger to him, and that this woman is like a stranger in his life. He feels