1. The author indicates the importance of the number 451 and the fireman's job by saying "With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head" and "He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char-colored sleeve." 2. This introduction goes against conventional wisdom and signal to the reader because instead of putting out the fires, the firemen are the people actually burning the books. 3. The author indicates that Montag has a daring, or rebellious streak in his character by letting the readers know that Montag keeps some of the books at his house, instead of burning them like his job requires him to. 4. Montag would have the symbols on his clothing because it shows importance to the event of burning books. The number 451 is relevant …show more content…
The mechanical Hound is a program controlled dog that is used to track down its prey and to hunt for the illegal books that are burned by the firefighters. The Hound and Montag do not have a good relationship because the hound will growl and threaten to attack if Montag comes near. Montag believes that somebody has programmed the hound to react with anger toward him. 11. The significance of the mechanical Hounds attack towards Montag is that someone must have programmed the hound to react negatively toward Montag. 12. When Montag's team is called to a fire in an old house they find a woman with many books hidden in her house. The woman clearly felt as if books were something that must be saved because when the firefighters were going to burn her house, she refused to leave. She was willing to die for what she believed in.The literary term that is spoken by the old woman is “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall ever be put out.”(33) 13. Captain Beatty says “A man named Latimer said that to a man named Nicholas Ridley, as they were being burnt alive at Oxford, for heresy , on October 16, 1555.”(37) about the quotation when they return to the firehouse. The incident shows that Captain Beatty had once been educated by books because he acknowledged the old womans behavior as human
Montag is realizing wrong his world really is. He wants to change it too. He says “ Im going to do something, I dont know what yet but im going t do something big.” He doesnt know what to do yet because at this point he hasnt figured out the “missing peice”. Montag says “ I dont know. we have everything we need to be happy, but we arent happy. Something is missing.” then he starts to understand that books are the key to knowladge and knowledge is what they need. he says “There must be something in books that we cant imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there, you dont stay for nothing.” And this is the turning point of the book because now montag is ready to take
First if all, one ironic example in the story is the fact that firemen are starting fires when they burn books, when firemen are supposed it put fires out. On page 8, Bradbury writes as Clarisse argues softly with Montag,
Once Montag witnesses the unethical extent that the firemen would go through to destroy the existence of books, he realizes how corrupt and unjust the societal rules were. “He looked with dismay at the floor. ‘We burned an old woman with her books” (47).
Montag was known as being a firefighter, meaning his job was to burn books to cease independent thought throughout society, but after realizing he really wasn’t happy the way the world was run, he went against it. Montag was stashing books in
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by author Ray Bradbury we are taken into a place of the future where books have become outlawed, technology is at its prime, life is fast, and human interaction is scarce. The novel is seen through the eyes of middle aged man Guy Montag. A firefighter, Ray Bradbury portrays the common firefighter as a personal who creates the fire rather than extinguishing them in order to accomplish the complete annihilation of books. Throughout the book we get to understand that Montag is a fire hungry man that takes pleasure in the destruction of books. It’s not until interacting with three individuals that open Montag’s eyes helping him realize the errors of his ways. Leading Montag to change his opinion about books, and more over to a new direction in life with a mission to preserve and bring back the life once sought out in books. These three individual characters Clarisse McClellan, Faber, and Granger transformed Montag through the methods of questioning, revealing, and teaching.
To start, the novel Fahrenheit 451 describes the fictional futuristic world in which our main protagonist, Guy Montag, resides. Montag is a fireman, but not your typical fireman. In fact, the firemen we see in our society are the ones, who risk their lives trying to extinguish fires; however, in the novel firemen are not such individuals, what our society thinks of firemen is unheard of by the citizens of this futuristic American country. Instead, firemen burn books. They erase the knowledge of the world.
“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” -Stephen Chbosky. Fire has many symbolic meanings throughout the novel and throughout history. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, he uses fire symbolism to represent Montag’s view of fire throughout the novel. Warmth, purification, and censorship are symbolic meanings of fire relating to Montag’s journey throughout the story.
In the 1950 novel Fahrenheit 451, AUTHOR Ray Bradbury presents the now familiar images of mind controlING worlds. People now live in a world where they are blinded from the truth of the present and the past. The novel is set in the, perhaps near, future where the world is AT war, and firemen set fires instead of putting them out. Books and written knowledge ARE banned from the people, and it is the firemen's job to burn books. Firemen are the policemen of THE FUTURE. Some people have rebelled by hiding books, but have not been very successful. Most people have conformed to THE FUTURE world. Guy Montag, a fireman, is a part of the majority who have conformed. BUT throughout the novel Montag goes through a transformation, where he changes from a Conformist to a Revolutionary.
Fire is very common in basic human life and has many purposes. With its many uses, fire’s symbolic meaning is open to various interpretations. In regards to Fahrenheit 451 fire can symbolize knowledge, destruction, and also rebirth. Ray Bradbury illustrates correctly the ambiguity of fire’s metaphors through Montag. As Montag gains new perspectives on fire readers are shown that fire is a very prominent symbol with multiple meanings.
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.
“Behind his mask of conformity, Montag gradually undergoes a change of values. Montag realized his life had been meaningless without books” (Liukkonen). In the beginning of the novel, Montag said, “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (Bradbury 3). For most of his life, Montag conformed just like the other members of society. He set things on fire because it was his job and did not question whether or not it was the right thing to do. Throughout the story, however, he grew to find and voice his own opinions and resisted the conformity that his society stressed. When Montag had to decide whether or not to burn Beatty to death, he proved himself by not giving in to what was expected. He killed the captain of the police department, which was an entirely defiant act (Bradbury
In the book Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, is a firefighter for his city. But firefighters don't put out fires in this society, they start them. In this society, books are illegal to own or read. A firefighter's job is to burn books so nobody "gets hurt". History has been changed so that they believe firemen always started fires and Benjamin Franklin was the first fireman. One day on the job, they get a call that someone has been hoarding books in their house. When they get there, there's a woman yelling that they can't take
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
When one fears what one does not understand, he often becomes defensive, avoiding it at all costs. This is the problem facing Guy Montag; his society absolutely deplores challenge. Anything that can be perceived as offensive is banished. In their eyes, books are cursed objects which make people think. Without literature, the public’s thought is suppressed, and they live mindless lives. In the book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Beatty is the captain of the firemen. As a fireman, Beatty acts as the controlling arm for this suppression. He is the one harshly guiding the public towards apathy by burning their books. However, when seen as just a man, Beatty is not important. He is one fireman against millions of books. He is important because of what he represents to Montag, which is: the censorship of information, an impetus to learn, and what
It is only once in a while a book comes along so great in its message, so frightening in its inferred meaning’s of fire as in Fahrenheit 451. Fire, which is used as a symbol of chaos, destruction, and death, can also lead to knowledge. Fire has 3 different meanings. Fire represents change, which is shown through Montag’s symbolic change from using fire to burn knowledge into using fire to help him find knowledge; fire can represent knowledge as demonstrated through Faber, and fire can represent rebirth of knowledge as shown through the phoenix. Fire represents change in the novel because fire allows Montag to undergo a symbolic change in which he stops using fire to burn knowledge but instead help him find it.