Montag's Value In Fahrenheit 451, By Ray Bradbury

Gracie Forlenza

Mr. Kuykendall

English 111-B

2 March 2023

Failure to Respect Life's Value

In the iconic Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, protagonist George Bailey once desperately said, “‘Get me back to my wife and kids! Help me, Clarence! I want to live again!’” after considering suicide. Unfortunately, many people in the novel Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, do not know the value of human life, leading to many situations throughout the novel. In the novel, Bradbury demonstrates that many citizens in the technophile society find little meaning in their lives, leading to overdosing on medications, reckless driving, and committing murder among others. Bradbury narrates the journey of a man named Guy Montag, who is desperately

One night, Guy Montag is walking home from work. Being a fireman, he does not hold much knowledge about the world and is only taught to burn everything in life. When Montag first meets Clarisse, he is awestruck by the way she thinks, taking every aspect of her life into interest. Before they part, she asks him if he is happy. Montag questions the young girl’s thoughts and wonders if he is really happy with his career and marriage. The author states, “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (Bradbury, 9). The quote transfers readers into the mind of Montag, and if he is going to take action to fix his happiness. He realizes that talking to Clarisse sparked a little bit of joy in his heart that he had not felt for years. After Clarisse departed, Montag is left with the notion that he is not happy and may need to change his life for the better before it is too late. The peculiarity of Clarisse’s mind changes Montag’s awareness of the world as well as the way he receives happiness in his own

Later the night he had met Clarisse, Montag finds his wife, Mildred, after her suicide attempt of overdosing on sleeping pills. After taking measures to save her life, he begins to consider her to be meaningless as well as her not valuing her life. The author states, “His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable” (Bradbury, 42). Mildred’s overdose clearly states that she is a confused and depressed woman. After she is healed, Montag considers what the “doctors” have said about overdosing and suicidal attempts being a regular activity. After Mildred’s overdose, Montag has realized that many people, including his own wife, do not know the value of their lives, so they try to receive happiness by intaking large amounts of