He begins to ask more daring questions to his Captain, regarding forbidden books and firemen of the past. Quickly, he realizes that these sudden thoughts weren’t products of his own imagination, but “a much younger voice speaking for him,” or the voice that belonged to Clarisse McClellan (31). Before he could further question the Captain, the alarm rang abruptly and the firemen were on duty once again. When they arrive at the scene, the homeowner is still inside house, unlike usual. Montag is hesitant to perform his duties, and is slightly irritated, because with the woman remaining inside her burning home meant that, “there was nothing to tease [his] conscience later,” (34).
Montag began his career as a dedicated fireman. He was taught to burns books and he performed this task well, taking great joy in his life as a firemen. He loved the smell of kerosene burning the books at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. These were the books that were so vehemently hated. But this all changed when Montag met a young girl by the name of Clarisse.
When I first read Chapter Ten of “After the Fact”, by James West Davidson and Mark Hamilton Lytle, I was shocked at the methods meat factories use in preparing their products. I was especially shocked seeing as now; we have so many food regulations that most people don’t think twice about the food that is going in their bodies. I am now thinking, do these things still appear in our lives today? It was nice to know that Theodore Roosevelt took action in an attempt to fix these major problems. He became aware of the poor conditions of the meat industry through the book “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair.
The book showed that Montag was working like normal and never expected what was coming. He only thought he was going to do something he does every day, and he did but it was his own house. Montag wanted to understand the point of life and be happy but before he could figure it his entire world came crumbling down. Montag had no choice but leave everything he had behind because he had to burn it down.
Imagine a world where firemen start fires instead of putting them out. Fahrenheit 451 is set in a utopian, or dystopian to us, society, where books are burned and people rarely have real social interaction. Although Fahrenheit 451 seems nowhere close to our society, we are both alike and different to their world. The freedom of information is both very different and somewhat alike.
In this part of the book, all of the firemen including Montag received a call to burn a house with the books in there. Here became the turning point for Montag as he saw the woman, who already had made her decision to die rather than live in a world of oppression and restricted freedom of thought which books symbolize in this part, burns with the illegal books in the burning house, refusing to go out without the assurance of the safety of the books. We can suppose that his perception is gradually changing through the phrase showing that Montag felt a huge guilt over this, unlike the other firemen or Beatty. Furthermore, during the conversation with his wife, Mildred, Montag says, “We burn a thousand books. We burnt a woman.
Bradbury characterizes the firefighters in Fahrenheit 451 as unoriginal duplicates in this passage by utilising sight and smell imagery as well as rhetorical questions to make apparent the uniformity of the society and its connection to the loss of individual identity. The characterization of Bradbury’s firefighters is accomplished through imagery to prove the uniformity of society. Having all firefighters look the same creates a certain distance between them and the rest of society, this alienation allows for easier/greater control over both the firefighters and the general population, which in turn . The firefighters were described extensively in this passage with major similarities to the fires they are responsible for, “their charcoal
Suspense and tension build in this scene as the firemen confront the woman. In this scene Montag steals a book from the woman's house, this builds the tension because for the first time Montag questions whether burning books is
He tells his wife, Mildred, “We burn a thousand books. We burnt a woman.” He then says, “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there”. Fire reflects this because as Montag begins to question this he starts to question his profession. The text states, “He pressed at the pain in his eyes and suddenly the odor of kerosene made him vomit”.
(STEWE-1): After the experience, Montag returns home and while he is in bed sick he tells his wife that ”We burned an old women with her books”(47). This experience has a lasting effect on him as it would on everyone else who, ”said nothing on their way back to the firehouse. No-body looked at anyone else. They did not even smoke their pipes”(37). This important event makes everyone sad and depressed on the way back to the firehouse as they rethink what they had just witnessed even though this has happened before.
Growing up causes people to lose their innocence. When people are young, most think the world is a happy place that’s all sunshine and rainbows but when people grow up, they are faced with taxes and careers. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, Montag meets someone who fills him with questions to the point where he sees that what he was living in wasn’t right. The same goes for Pleasantville and The Wood written by Bobulski. Both stories experience a change that makes the characters see everything in a different light.
Daisy Mira Advanced English 1 Ms. Vogt April 19, 2024. “The Evolution of Morality: Examining Montag’s Transformation in Fahrenheit 451” Does your past define who you are now in the present? Should it define who you are, or change the way people look at you? For Montag, his past in fact does define who he is in the present.
Social justice is often strived for by society. It is a necessary force in allowing humankind to coexist. However, the individual also has to play a role in maintaining social justice. The role of the individual is stated in the texts Fahrenheit 451 and “The Pedestrian” by Ray Bradbury and “Letter From Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr. by illustrating the consequences of not participating in the monitoring of justice.
Whatever Montag has hidden behind the ventilator is just now starting to spark a worry in Montag’s eyes as he gains an understanding of what the consequences could be. Montag is starting to grasp an understanding that what he does can affect him and cause a poor outcome for him. As Montag and his captain Beatty are having a talk Montag asks, “Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?” (Bradbury 31). Before Montag began to think for himself Clarisse asked him the same question, however, he was convinced that what he had been told was true and was too ignorant to look for an understanding.
Dilemma of censorship: Possessing, reading, and distributing books is illegal in the book Fahrenheit 451. Society is only concerned with instant gratification from entertainment and prefers life in the fast-forward. Firefighters are now responsible to destroy books hidden in houses by burning down these houses. Interests other than technology and entertainment are not encouraged and these individuals are often targeted as threats. There is no clear reason of censorship in this future, but fast cars, loud music, and advertisements are all causes of an over-stimulated society, where literature, philosophy, and individual thought are forgotten.
