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Montag's Journey In Fahrenheit 451

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Said best by Joseph Campbell, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 closely relates to this quote in the sense that Guy Montag stumbles upon a woman who treasures her books more than life itself, literally. After several years of working as a firefighter in this dystopian society, he runs into Clarisse who then questions his happiness. Confused and angered he begins to wonder why she would ask him such a question. After analyzing, he comes to the conclusion that he is not happy. That’s where his heroic journey begins, which follows Joseph Campbell’s hero cycle, including the departure and initiation. Although, Montag may not be the …show more content…

With the idea of books being illegal, it leads to more obstacles. Montag’s wife can be considered one of these trials; she wants nothing to do with books. “You’ve got to hand it back tonight, don’t you? Captain Beatty knows you got it, doesn’t he?” (Bradbury 74). Asking this question, she puts a lot of tension on Guy. Not only does he have the road of trials to overcome, he also has the journey to take. This so called journey leads him to a group of survivors who have dedicated their lives to memorizing novels. “I’ve heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps call them, and if you keep walking far enough and keep an eye peeled, they say there’s lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles. Most of them are hunted in the cities. They survive, I guess.” (Bradbury 126). This isn’t the most pleasing idea, but Montag doesn’t have the choice. At one point in the story, Montag kills his captain with a flamethrower. This leads to his call to action. “The captain’s dead. He found the audio-capsule, head heard your voice, he was going to trace it. I killed him with the flamethrower.” (Bradbury 124). Shocked at what he had done, he came to the realization that he has to disappear, and disappear

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In the beginning, Montag was not always a hero. In the beginning, Montag was a self centered firefighter who burned books. He was just a man in a broken society just trying to go by life. He didn’t really care about much, and his marriage was an unhappy one.

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This quote alludes to Montag's robbery of books from the old lady's home. Montag, feeling remorseful, depicts his activities as an automatic real reflex. He depicts his wrongdoing as programmed and claims it includes no idea on his part. He accuses his hands for a few different wrongdoings over the span of the book. Montag sees his hands as contaminated from taking the book and depicts how the ¨poison functions its way into whatever remains of the body.¨

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Her memory was always in his head, the aura she radiated forceful. With just one meeting, Montag already began to question his beliefs and actions. “And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper.

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1282 Words | 6 Pages

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is a classic novel that challenges authority through self-discovery and growth. The main character Guy Montag is a dedicated fireman. He enjoys his job, watching pages of books become nothing more than burnt ash. He has never questioned anything before, nor has he had a reason to. That is, until he encounters three important individuals that seem to influence a change in Montag and ultimately change his world.

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In society, some people have conflicts with things and people around them. In Fahrenheit 451, the main character, Montag, has to burn books for a living. Montag’s life began to change when he has a decision to steal, hide, and read the books, or turn the books in and act like everyone else. Ray Bradbury shows Montag’s conflict with his wife, a friend, and technology in Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury uses Mildred, Montag’s wife, to show how everyone there is like robots.

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1337 Words | 6 Pages

(SIP-A) Montag is not willing to believe what the society says about books and is denying it. (STEWE-1) Even though Montag has read the books that he hid and does not understand them he still tries. “Here now, said Montag We’ll start over again, at the beginning” (Bradbury 65).

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733 Words | 3 Pages

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.

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1055 Words | 5 Pages

Would anyone conform to their societies wishes if they were in Montag’s place, or would they still be their own individual as Montag did throughout Fahrenheit 451? Montag was told, on multiple occasion, to conform to the society and that it would be easier; however he denies society and forms his own individual personality due to the influences of his friends. Although Montag’s society told him to be indifferent and conform to what the society wanted, many other societies would have told him to be unique, not the doll that his society and government had made and told him to be. Montag was told to be what society wanted him to do; however, he lived by being an individual against the grain of society in the book. Montag had been told to conform to society and the government and even by his boss, yet he still rebelled against everything that had to do with conformity.

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544 Words | 3 Pages

Clarisse McClellan is the most significant character in the novel Fahrenheit 451. Clarisse plays a huge role in the storyline as she is the reason of Montag’s metamorphosis. She does this by making Montag question his surroundings, being a role model and changing Montag’s emotions towards others. Clarisse’s role and impact on Montag makes the most Important character.

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386 Words | 2 Pages

In conclusion, throughout the entire novel, Montag continuously changes. He goes from loving his job, to rethink his job. In the end, he realizes that his job not only hurts him, but it hurts other people. He refuses to burn houses for the rest of the novel. He finally realizes that it is not good to burn other humans and their houses and

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(STEWE-2) Besides asking questions about society’s relationships, Montag questions further and starts asking about society’s rules on burning books after he experiences a woman burn with her books. He says to Mildred, “'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.'" (Bradbury 48). Montag, before, had blindly followed and enforced society’s rules about burning books.

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1802 Words | 8 Pages

Montag mentions how if there was no solution, then there was no problem. In this case, the fire was the answer to resolving any solution. This shows that Beatty has filled Montag’s head with a bunch of false information which Montag later finds helpful. If Montag had not obeyed Beatty and the government, he would have died. Montag does not have independence all because of Beatty and his technological weapons that forced Montag to burn his books without rethinking his actions.

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850 Words | 4 Pages

The perception of life could be split into two things: joy and happiness. These things could make or break emotional stability. This is evident in the story Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury our main character Montag has experiences that change him slowly throughout the text. These experiences would shape him into a wiser man than he was in the beginning of the text.others may argue that you don't say that you really only need one because it decreases the chances of negativity from entering your life,but I disagree that you only have one perspective to be happy because ,montag still felt empty with the books ,montag needed something else for the books to work.

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1179 Words | 5 Pages

The word illicit sums up the confusion and weakness of the main character, Montag, a follower of the dystopian society, but introduced to a new way of thinking, but he is incapable of handling the contrast of reality and what life is really about. The oppression of dystopian society reveals when he is unsettled about his life due to several instances which make him begin to think beyond his ability and act irrationally rebelling to in an attempt to make changes in society. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury illicits a rebellion through the characterization of Guy Montag as he questions the direction of society in order to suggest the audience does the same thing. Unsettled in his life, the protagonist, Guy Montag is forced to question the status quo of his 2025 society which make him begin to think beyond his ability and act irrationally rebelling to in an attempt to make changes.

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515 Words | 3 Pages

When Montag reveals his hidden books to Mildred, she does not take time to understand them. “‘It doesn’t mean anything!’” (Bradbury 65).  She, instead, worries about how it might affect her image if they are found out. “He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face paled out and her eyes were fastened wide” (Bradbury 63).

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