Individualism In Fahrenheit 451

The people in Fahrenheit 451 have been brainwashed into conforming to the wants and needs of the government, but there are some who have taken a different path. Clarisse is one of those people who go against the norm and question the demands of the government, while people like Mildred conformists who only want to live their life in peace. These two paths taken by these characters each play different purposes in the book. How they take part in society and the way they affect other people's lives is completely different and determines if they are truly living life or only controlled like a puppet. Each of these two women were brought up to believe different things and have different morals and values. The nurture each one received during

She was raised to believe in the government and what they told and to not question what has been set in stone by society. "Montag, take my word for it, I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. They're about non-existent people, figments of imagination, if they're fiction. And if they're non-fiction, it's worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down another's gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost" (PG 1.629). She is like the majority of people set in the time of Fahrenheit 451 who trust in the government to tell the truth, but there are some people who have been raised differently, raised to read and think for

Both live very different lives, but the question is whether they can actually survive. The people of their society may go through their lives thinking they are living with free will, but without the knowledge of books, they could not know what it truly means to live and survive. When people like Mildred are introduced to knowledge they either block it out because they are afraid of what would happen, or actively go against it because they have been taught so firmly that books are bad. "You see? I knew it, that's what I wanted to prove! I knew it would happen! I've always said, poetry and tears, poetry and suicide and crying and awful feelings, poetry and sickness; all that much! Now I've had it proved to me” -Mrs. Phelps (Part II). The kind of people in the society of Fahrenheit 451 act like roaches, when introduced to light they flee away into the safety of what is comfortable and reliably placed. On the opposite side of the spectrum there are people like Mildred who find the smallest thinks to question and learn about. She was raised to question life and seek out what she doesn't know. Her nature is what makes her first talk to Montag, In life experiences Clarisse lived more in her short life then Mildred lived throughout her whole life. While both women have lived their lives in different ways only Clarisse truly embraced life and survived by affecting others