Guy Montag's Independence In Fahrenheit 451

Books are often written by authors who want to tell people something that they believe to be true and important. Ray Bradbury, who wrote in the mid 1900’s to early 2000’s and is often referred to as a science fiction writer, did this in his book including the book Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 is a book about Guy Montag who lives in a futuristic society where the government has banned books and burns any they can find. Montag has gone along with this for the majority of his life but he meets a girl named Clarisse and she shows him that there is more to life, and he spends the rest of the book trying to figure out what is right and what is wrong. Ray Bradbury uses Guy Montag’s independence from societal expectation to show that people should

Bradbury uses Guy Montag's courage to read books to show that people are not satisfied with only a little information and they want to acquire more. Faber explains to Montag “‘And I want you to teach me to understand what I read…Number one as I said, quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interactions of the first two,’” (Bradbury 78, 81). Faber explains to Montag that books contain knowledge and understanding of the world and people. Bradbury remarks through Faber’s explanation that the information that books can give people is important because without that information they lose the understanding of their own identity. Bradbury shows that the desire for understanding and knowledge is a normal thing for being a

Willis E. McNelly, who got his doctorate in English literature from Northwestern University and taught at California State University shares this idea. In an article McNelly writes “In fact, Bradbury seized upon the hatreds abroad in 1953 when the book was written, and shows that hatred, war, desecration of the individual are all self-destructive. Bradbury’s 1953 vision of hatred becomes extrapolated to a fire which consumes minds, spirits, men, ideas, books,” (McNelly 71). He says that when people are controlled by this one thing, such as hatred, they can lose sight of who they really are. Bradbury shows this in Fahrenheit 451 when he shows how people are controlled by what the government tells. The hatred the government places in them makes everyone unhappy without even realizing it because they lost sight of themselves. When he makes Montag break free from society Montag is finally able to figure out who he is and be okay with it. Montag wanting to be different from others is something McNelly agrees with and Bradbury advocates