Government Control In Fahrenheit 451

“At least you were a fool about the right things” (Fahrenheit 451). Ray Bradbury wrote a book named Fahrenheit 451 in the 1950’s based on the future. The book is about fictional characters such as the following: Montag, Clarisse, Faber, Beatty, and Mildred. Fahrenheit 451 is mainly about this man named Guy Montag who soon realized that the government is in control of several things that they should not be able to control such as limiting items that can cause no harm. Believing in this strongly takes him on a journey to make things right. By reading Fahrenheit 451, one can see that Montag disagrees with the laws about the government banishing books and burning which leads him on his search for happiness. This realization is important because

He was the same as everyone else in his society… until he met a pretty and young seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McCellan. Beatty blamed it on her anyway. While all the firemen went to Montag’s house to burn it for breaking the government’s laws of having or hiding books Beatty questioned him, “‘Oh no! You weren’t fooled by that little idiots routine were you? Flowers, butterflies, leaves, sunsets, oh, hell! It’s all in her file. I’ll be damned. I’ve hit the bulls-eye… A few grass blades and the quarters of the moon. What trash. What good did she ever do with all that?’” (113-114). This quote shows Beatty’s opinion on the reason why he thinks Montag got caught up in wanting to read books, in breaking the law, and in changing his whole life style because of it. Clarisse did get Montag to start thinking more but she did not push him to want to read books or do what he did. Faber is the one to blame for Montag doing what he believes in. Beatty does not like having to keep his firemen in check; therefore, he let it slip a few times and tried to convince Montag to turn in the books and go on to his normal life. Montag wanted

The fire station would get the same nightly calls for the different people who were hiding books in their homes. For the last couple weeks of being a fireman he would go into the houses and steal some of the books that he and others were supposed to burn and stick them in his fireman suit. He did not know why he was doing it which led him to Faber. Everyone is the same around Montag. They do not think for themselves or question really much of anything. People just go with the flow. Montag and Faber are different they want books, they want to be able to think for themselves, and they want to decide for themselves if something makes them happy or if it makes them sad. When Montag goes to visits Faber he tells him that no one listens to him and that he is unhappy and thinks it is because of the books he is not allowed to read. Montag expresses, “‘ We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing i positively knew was gone was the books i’d burned in ten or twelve years. So i thought books might help’” (82). This quote shows that Montag is confused about why he is unhappy; on the other hand Faber acknowledges that Montag does not necessarily need books to be happy, but he needs what once was in the