How Did Montag Change In Fahrenheit 451

The novel “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury is a thought-provoking, applicable work that will be analyzed in literature classes until practically the end of time. The story revolves around the protagonist named Guy Montag, a fireman who burns books, as he lives in a oppressed dystopian society where it is against the law to possess books. He realizes he does not want to cater to current ideas such as preventing the distribution of knowledge so he rebels. Unfortunately, Guy realizes that his actions have consequences. At the end of the novel, he is on the outskirts of the city he lives in after narrowly escaping the dreaded “Mechanical Hound”. A few important characters other than Guy are Captain Beatty, the fire captain, Mildred, his narcissistic

Montag’s entire mindset transforms when he meets the seventeen-year-old Clarisse, who has many modern ideas that opposed the thought of every other civilian in this world. This meeting deeply affects Guy and makes him to begin to question every variable in his life. Mildred’s suicide was an event that also shaped Guy’s character because it was the moment where he realized he no longer loved her. Guy’s first form of theft and rebellion was when he stole a book from a house he burned down. At this point, he was slowly becoming less and less caring of the rules he abided his entire life. Beatty’s death especially shaped Guy’s life because Guy was the one who killed him. One way or another, these specific occurrences brought along the plot and made the protagonist a different person at the end of the

A unique aspect of this book was Bradbury’s lack of meticulousness location-wise. By this I mean that he does not exactly give away the name of the city Guy Montag lives in. He leaves that to the imagination of the readers. In order to determine the setting, I had to look closely for context clues that would inform me the time and place at which the story occurred. The story takes place in the United States because Bradbury mentions several cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. Furthermore, several colleges were mentioned like Harvard and UCLA in the text. Bradbury was not specific of the time period that the story took place in, but there are a few quotations that provided some explanation. One example of this is, “We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1990!” (74). A few other clues regarding the time period is the style of writing used. This book is clearly a dystopia because the country Guy lives in is ruled by a totalitarian government. Another clear giveaway that this a futuristic setting is the ecocritical approach that Bradbury takes and also imagery. For example, the Mechanical Hound in the firehouse shows how the people in this society tried to replicate something authentic and the by-product was fabricated. As stated in “Fahrenheit 451”, “Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature