Fahrenheit 451 Reflection Essay

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was an interesting novel to read. This text was the first book that kept me interested throughout the story. The thing that caught my interest was the style similarities to earlier texts I have read. The style of the book had similarities to George Orwell’s 1984 and had the big brother is watching you. This is first introduced when Montag is discussing with a woman on a walk. The first thing that stood out to me was his occupation and the duties associated with that. He worked as a fireman at a firehouse, but it is no ordinary job. Normally fireman go and put out fires when the alarm bell rings at the fire station. In this story, instead of putting out fires in houses they spray Kerosene all over houses. The reasoning behind spraying Kerosene all over other people’s houses interested me. The firehouse contained a long list of books that were illegal, and an alarm goes off when its

First thing worth discussing is the fact that the fire departments job is start fires instead of putting them out. The reported violations of books from the banned list resulted in the fire department showing up. Their job specifically required them to spray everything down with Kerosene and light it on fire. An ethical dilemma came up when Montag was spraying down some one’s house. This lady pleaded with him, while she was being grabbed, to let her stay in the house. Montag made a comment how these people always try suicide. Once the woman was at the edge of the house, she struck a match igniting the house on fire, and let herself burn. It is worth discussing what we would do in this situation and how it would make us feel to experience this. This situation brings up the idea of whether there should actually be bans on specific books. The sense of darkness presented in this story because of the fear described in Bradbury’s writing makes me think about this