Fahrenheit 451 Quote Analysis

Do you ever wonder how people's words affect someone’s way of living? How can words affect the way other people think or act? If so, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a good example to start with. Guy Montag, the protagonist, works as a fireman, but instead of helping setting off fires, he starts them, the whole purpose: burn books. Montag never questioned his way of lifestyle, his job, government, or even himself, until he met Clarisse. Clarisse, a seventeen year old girl, who was also Montag’s new neighbor, helped him open his eyes and confront reality. Clarisse was an “odd one”, she had something not many people had, knowledge. In Montag’s world, knowledge was something that many people lacked, this was the whole purpose of burning books,

Before Montag met Clarisse, he never thought about reading books, and he was never curious about how things were done before (history). Clarisse makes Montag question his surroundings, such as his society, and happiness. Everything started with a simple walk in the neighborhood to Clarisse’s house, followed by the question “"Are you happy?,"” introducing Montag's first internal problem, himself (7). After his first encounter with Clarisse, Montag seemed to have a crisis over his happiness, “Of course I'm happy. What does she think? I'm not? he asked the quiet rooms,” illustrating how Clarisse affected his mentality. Whenever he talked to Clarisse, Montag saw himself purely, raw, she “...refracted [his] own light to [him]…,” just like a mirror would (8). Montag began to be curious about Clarisse, “"How odd. How strange. And my wife thirty and yet you seem so much older at times. I can't get over it," Montag compares Clarisse to someone older than her because, even though she’s young, it seems as if he was talking to someone his age (21). Clarisse impacted Montag’s life by the questions she asked, little questions like “"Do you ever read any of the books you bum?"”, “"Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?"”, or comments such as, “"How did it start? How did you get into it? How did you pick your work and how did you happen to think to

There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” (79) Someone who understood the meaning of books and literature is something difficult to find in Montag’s society, since books were banned, anything related to them was too. “But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late? Hold on. He shut his eyes. Yes, of course. Again he found himself thinking of the green park a year ago,” Faber, a retired English teacher, was the only person Montag knew could help him (70). Faber made a huge difference on how Montag saw books, and their meaning, he gave Montag three things he was missing in order to seek answers in books, one: “Quality, texture of information.", two: “Leisure” (time to think), and three: “[T]he right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two,” which was knowing what to do with the information books carry (79-80). At the beginning of talking with Montag, Faber refused to give Montag any advice about books, he was too scared and much of a “cowardly old fool”, so he tried to send Montag back home, he feared how far Montag would go