The hero’s journey is a common template of many stories, where a hero goes on an adventure, and returns with clearer vision, awakened, or transformed by new knowledge he or she had not had before. In the dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, set in the 24th century, the main character, Guy Montag, goes on his own hero’s journey to learn of literature that has been long outlawed and burned by firemen, while occupying a job as a fireman himself. In the oppressive society that is his world, reading and owning books or any form of written works is illegal. Montag goes through a series of transformations in each stage of his journey, from the dissonance he experiences when he realizes he is not content with his life, to the trials of …show more content…
She really gets him thinking more about the world he lives in. When Montag goes through his bedroom after arriving at his house, he finally realizes he’s not content. Montag’s realization comes gradually, as, “He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself… like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing” (9). Metaphorically, Montag is the candle which has burned too long and is now collapsing. Montag once believed that his smile would never go away, and he could always live pleasantly, but now as he crosses the threshold, he knows he can longer go on pretending he is pleased with his place in life, as his smile fades away. Montag’s challenges and trials through the wilderness of the hero’s journey ultimately lead to his abyss. In a particular trial, he learns how shallow the society he lives in is when he hears Mildred and her lady friends talking. He gets frustrated, and says to his mentor, Faber, who is a retired english professor with an affinity for literature, through an earpiece, “Oh God, they way they jabber about people...and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!” (94). His exasperation of hearing the ignorant remarks the women say provokes him to read a poem, “Dover Beach”. He recites this poem from a book he had …show more content…
He is at work, when suddenly there is an alarm for the firemen. When the the the crew, including Montag, all arrive at the destination of the books being illegally held, he finds himself looking at his own house. He’s forced to burn his own house, “He burnt the bedroom walls and the cosmetics closet because he wanted to change everything… everything that showed he lived here in this empty house with a strange woman” (110). Montag is symbolically the Phoenix, the bird of fire which destroys itself in a show of flames, and respawns again five hundred years. He utilizes fire to burn and destroy every sign of himself living in the house with Mildred, who is referred as a strange woman because of how distant Montag’s relationship was with his own wife. However, Montag doesn’t just stop at burning his own house, he burns and kills his captain, Beatty. Montag becomes a man on the run, with a Mechanical Hound tracking him down. Similar to the Phoenix, he representatively recreates himself, going through a transformation. Before becoming a master of both the known and unknown worlds, Montag goes through a transformation which alters him. Montag runs away from the Mechanical Hound hunting him down, toward the river. He is swept away into the river after walking into it, and is seemingly baptized, or transformed, in the flowing waters. Montag’s thoughts overtake his mind, and he
...character Montag it is a weapon in the beginning, while deep in his thoughts it actually cleanses his mind completely, and he emerges as a new person. At the start of our story Montag is a hard-working firemen, who doesn’t really think anything to be out of the ordinary. He is comfortable with what he is doing and feels as if fire is his weapon. Upon meeting Clarisse he slowly starts to change into a new person. Stealing books and actually starting to think of the clear issues in this society, was what changed Montag into a new person. At the end of the book, we see Montag shift into his new “body.” He has become a changed man, no longer a firemen, but an outlaw to the state. Bradbury has clearly shown us that fire can be one thing in the eyes of one man and something else to another. We see how small things can push someone so far, that they can destroy everything.
Imagine a world in which there are no books, and every piece of information you learn comes from a screen. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, this nightmare is a reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman who instead of putting out fires burns books. He eventually meets Clarisse who changes his outlook on life and inspires him to read books (which are outlawed). This leads to Guy being forced on the run from the government. The culture, themes, and characters in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 construct a dystopian future that is terrifying to readers.
By the end of the book Montag had gone through a tremendous change. He looked at life in a new way. When Montag escaped from the world of book burning he discovered the book people sitting around a campfire in the woods, Montag walked slowly toward the fire and the five old men sitting there dressed in the dark-blue shirts. He did not know what to say to them. Sit down, said the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group. (147) the campfire represents warmth but it also represents the spirit and strength Montag had to start his new life as a book person.
After arriving to Montag’s home, Beatty instructs Montag to burn his own books as his punishment. Instead, Montag burns the television sets and the bed, in spite of Millie’s pleasures. When Beatty discovers the hidden book in Montag’s jacket and the earpiece, he tells Montag he and Faber will be arrested. In fear, Montag turns the flame thrower on Beatty, making him a “shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin no longer human or known.” After burning the mechanical dog, Montag reassures himself that Beatty wanted to die.
As Montag was reading the books he say’s “There must be something in books, something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house;....”(48). In the beginning Bradbury writes about how Montag just thought the the reason the people acted like that, because they were crazy but now he’s seeing there must be something powerful and meaningful in books. This incident also had Montag rethink his lifestyle, because he told his wife “... maybe I wait my job awhile?”(48). That was unexpected because at first he didn't see anything but his job. Bradbury added that the lady in the house made Montag confounded. Montag commented “well, this fire’ll last me the rest of my life, God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind all night. I’m crazy with trying.”(48). This was unexpected because he’s seen fires all the time but somehow this one has traumatized him. Also when the woman in the burning house protected about them having her books, he was thinking like what’s making her stay in this house with some unmeaningful books. “You can’t have my books,” she said.”(35). After that night Montag was fed up, with everything because of that one woman persistence to stay in that house with
He seems to be content in his life and is infatuated by his job. The opening line in the novel is from Montag’s view point and says, “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.” (Bradbury, 1). The reader is led to believe Montag believes whole heartedly in what he does for a living. However, when Bradbury introduces Montag’s first antagonist, Clarisse McClellan, Montag begins to question aspects of his life. Clarisse is young, full of ideas, different from the rest of society, asks a lot of questions, and has her own views of life. Clarisse was interesting and brought light to their dark world. The second antagonist is Montag’s wife, Mildred. Mildred on the other hand is not quite as interesting. She is egocentric, unhappy, and concerned only about the walls (televisions) in her home and the characters from the shows being referred to as family. Beatty, Montag’s boss, would be the third antagonist of the novel and he is portrayed as a loud over bearing man. When Clarisse McClellan dies and Montag is forced to burn books, a home, and the occupant that refuses to leave, Montag goes through a change in character. This is the point where the reader would categorize Montag as a round character. Montag begins to question his life, work, society, and all that surround him. Montag had actually been sneaking books from fires over the past year out of curiosity but had never actually read them up until this point. Montag goes against all that firefighters believe in and starts to read the banned books. Mildred filled with fear of discovery and retaliation begs Montag to not bring about such a risk. However, against his wife’s wishes, Montag chose not to listen. Montag got a professor named Faber to help him better understand the books he was reading and that is when Montag realized
Someone else who changed Montag's thinking, changed it by their actions not by tell him anything.<YOU NEED TO EXPLAIN MORE SO THE READER KNOWS WHAT YOU MEAN.> One day the firemen got a call with an address of someone who was hiding books. The firemen, doing their job like always, went to the house to find the books and burn them.
Within the many layers of Montag lay several opposite sides. For example, Montag is a fireman who burns books for a living but at home, spends time reading novels, poetry, and other written material. Although Montag could be called a hypocrite, he does not enjoy both the reading and the burning at the same time; he goes through a change that causes him to love books. Humans have the power to change and grow from one extreme to another, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. In addition, when Mildred is with Montag, Montag does not have feelings for her but thinks of her as she is killed by the bombs. He possesses both the knowledge that Mildred does not love him and the heart that truly cares, but he knows not how to deal with this. His feelings are oppressed; it takes a major event (the bomb) to jolt them from hibernation.
Guy Montag proves that he is oblivious to his peers' feelings when he reads a poem to Mildred's friend Mrs. Phelps and she cries at his words. Bradbury is trying to show that even the simplest of actions can have deeply harmful effects on people. The emotionally damaged people in society cannot process the deep meaning of Guy's poem; had Guy known this he would not have hurt Mrs. Phelps. Mildred's
People often question their meaning in life, and one theory that frequently comes out of it is that one is born to complete his life mission. Once he discovers his mission, he will fill its demand. It will fill him with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury, the main character Guy Montag is a fireman who believes his duty is to burn every book he discovers so he can keep his society away from the dangerous, fearsome knowledge that they do not want. However, under the influence of Clarisse McClellan and Faber, Montag becomes aware that his true life mission is no longer to start fire on books, but rather, to save those books to prove to his community that knowledge is not to be fear, but to be value. By using white imagery, Bradbury demonstrates that people’s view of life can be influenced by others to show us that people can bring out the true quality within you.
When Montag meets Clarisse, his neighbor, he starts to notice that there is more to life than burning books. Montag states, “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I have used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of those books” (Bradbury 49). It begins to bother Montag that all he has done for the past years is burn books. He starts to rethink his whole life, and how he has been living it. Montag goes on to say, “It took some men a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! It is all over” (Bradbury 49) Before, Montag never cares about what he has been doing to the books, but when he begins to ignore the distractions and really think about life he starts to notice that he has been destroying some other mans work. Montag begins to think more of the world
The first of all, Montag loses his control over his own mind. At the beginning of the story, he meets a beautiful girl called Clarisse. She is a peculiar girl who wonders about the society and how people live in there. She tells Montag the beauty of the nature, and also questions him about his job and life. Though he has been proud of being a fireman, Clarisse says, “I think it’s so strange you’re a fireman, it just doesn’t seem right for you, somehow” (21). Montag feels “his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (21) by her words. Everything Clarisse says is something new to him and he gradually gets influenced a lot by this mysterious girl. Actually, the impact of the girl is too significant that his mind is taken over by her when he talks with Beatty, the captain of the firemen. “Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, ‘Didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?’” (31). His mind is not controlled by himself in this part. He takes of Clarisse’s mind and it causes confusion within his mind. It can be said that this happening is an introduction of him losing his entire identity.
... his argument thus leading to him questioning things more instead of accepting what life gives him. Finally Beatty teaches Montag something in his death. As Montag comes away from the incident, knowing he just committed murder, he also realizes that Beatty wanted to die and that it was no different from suicide. Beatty wished to die since his life was miserable without literature and he works as a fireman, the very people who burn the books. Although Beatty is a well read educated man, he conforms to society which forces him to do what he does not. Therefore he represents somewhat of martyr similar to the unidentified women that burned with her books earlier in the book. From him killing Beatty, Montag learns the misery of conformity and of the oppression living inside of Beatty.
At the start of the novel, Montag is a fireman who loves his job. Firemen in this society do not put out fires, they start them. They burn all books and houses with books, and whoever chooses to stay with the books. It is easy to tell the Guy loves his job by the way that he lingers in the firehouse after a long days work. He takes his time in the shower, then he carefully hangs up his equipment and takes his time walking home (Bradbury 2.) Montag is the way he thinks he wants to be and he does not believe that anything could change him. He is unwilling to change his ways because he is happy the way he is, and he thinks he is living life the way it should be lived. Until a young woman named Clarisse talks to him, that at first he thinks she is stupid and not worth his time, but little does he know that this one girl has already begun to change his whole viewpoint on the meaning of life.
At the beginning of the story, Montag is emotionally stable. It is evident that he is happy with his job when he says, “Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me.” He describes their routine as “Well, it's a job just like any other. Good work with lots of variety. Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.” However, as soon as he meets his new neighbor, Clarisse, he is forever changed. She describes a time when people actually read books, a time when you could think freely. She then moves on to question whether or not Montag is really happy. Although Montag does not immediately realize it, he is not happy. This becomes evident when he vomits at the scent of kerosene after returning home from burning a woman’s home. When faced with challenges, Montag becomes irritated. This is especially evident at the end of the story when Beatty confronts Montag outside of his house. Montag burns him and knocks out the other firemen. However, he mourns his death and realizes that he did in fact want to die.