Guy Montag is a fireman in charge of burning books. A gentle young girl named Clarisse
McClellan opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocently penetrating questions and peculiar love of people and nature. After his wife Mildred attempts suicide without even realizing what she is doing, after he witnesses an old woman let herself be burned with her books, and after he hears that Clarisse has been killed by a speeding car, Montag searches for solutions to his rising dissatisfaction in a stash of books he has stolen and hidden. He looks to
Mildred for help and support, but she prefers television to her husband's company and cannot understand why he would want to take the terrible risk of reading books.
Montag remembers an old intellectual named Faber with whom he once talked in the park and goes to him for help in understanding what he reads. Meanwhile, Beatty, Montag's superior, has guessed that Montag is experimenting with books and hints that he should turn in the book he stole from the old woman's library within 24 hours. Faber explains the value of books to Montag, which lies in their ability to store and communicate meaningful information, something which their society now lacks. He agrees to help Montag and gives him a two-way radio which fits into his ear so that he can hear what Montag hears and talk to him secretly. Montag goes home and finds two of his wife's friends there. Their superficiality angers him, and he shows them a book of poetry and reads them one of the poems. Mildred tries to explain this away as standard fireman procedure for proving to people how useless books are, but the women leave quite disturbed and upset. Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to Beatty. Beatty browbeats him with his impressive knowledge of literature and historical quotations, which he uses to support his argument that books are dangerous and must be destroyed. An alarm comes through, and they rush off to Montag's own house. Mildred rushes out, and Montag realizes it was she who put in the alarm. Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself, and when he is done, he places him under arrest. Beatty continues to berate Montag, who turns the flamethrower on his superior and proceeds to burn him to ashes.
Montag got his old books because of the burning of the women. Montag needed a teacher and remembered he once met Professor Faber at the park. He decided to go to him and talk in person because Faber didn’t want to talk on the phone. The reason Montag wanted to talk to him was because he wanted to make copies of the Bible since he had the last
The first event that results in Montag becoming a dynamic character is his conversations with Clarisse McClellan. She is seventeen, and people consider her insane and anti-social. She is considered anti-social, because she is talkative and expressive. In Bradbury’s made up world, the meaning of social is staring at the parlor walls (large TV screens), and having no thought at all. Clarisse is very different from the rest: “I rarely watch the ‘parlor walls’ or go to races or Fun Parks. So I’ve lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know that once the billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they even had to stretch the advertising out so it would last” (pg.7).Clarisse’s enthusiastic and cheerful disposition lightens Montag’s attitude, making him a more optimistic person. He is not so closed-minded anymore, and he learns to be himself, and sometimes care free. Montag learns to see the brighter side of things and believe in him...
... story progresses, Montag completely turns his belief system around and becomes an advocate for the salvation of books. He is cast out of his own job and home, but at the last moment his decision saves him from certain destruction by a nuclear bomb. Montag becomes a hero, one of the last few remaining with the power of literature contained in their minds.
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.
She is addicted to sleeping pills, absorbed in the shallow dramas played on her "parlor walls" (flat-panel televisions), and indifferent to the oppressive society around her. She is described in the book as "thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon." Despite her husband's attempts to break her from the spell society has on her, Mildred continues to be shallow and indifferent. After Montag scares her friends away by reading Dover Beach and unable to live with someone who has been hoarding books, Mildred betrays Montag by reporting him to the firemen and abandoning him.
To begin with, Montag’s house creates suspense in the story. Hidden in Montag’s house are books. When Beatty comes over and tells him
He realizes that he is limited to his knowledge and freedom by his government and he doesn’t want that for himself anymore. Bradbury symbolizes this when Montag says to Mildred, “ ‘There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stand in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.’ ” (48). During this quote Montag begins to question his society, and why he burns books. He becomes eager to know why they have certain rules and hopes to find the answers in books. Montag’s curiosity also is established when he says, “ ‘I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why? I don’t that’s sure. Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. The just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes! I don’t hear those idiot bastards in your parlor talking about it. God, Millie, don’t you see? An hour a day, two hours, with these books and maybe…’” (70). This displays that Montag is starting to open his eyes to the truth about the world around him. Montag is starting to question authority and the “true facts” that his government gives his society. Montag is becoming empowered and beginning to think for
One of the main reasons that Montag changed so drastically over the course of the book was his curiosity. Montag spent a lot of time thinking about his job and started questioning everything he was doing. He starts wondering why books need to be burned and why things are the way that they are. Montag takes up a special interest in book and why things are this way. “Was-was it always like this? The firehouse, our work?” Montag asks Beatty showing his curiosity. Montag’s curiosity is what drives him to find out everything he can about books, society and the way that things used to be. It is only natural for him to begin to question everything especially because his job involves burning hundreds of books a day yet he was never told why these books need to burned. Imagine destroying an object everyday, and being told how important your job is. Naturally you would want to know why you are destroying these objects. This is what happened to Montag and Beatty tried to explain it to him and tells him he shouldn’t be too curious about it “A natural error, curiosity alone,” Beatty also asks Montag “Listen to me, Montag. Once to each fireman, at least once in his career, he just itches to know what these books are all about. He just aches to know. Isn't that so?” Curiosity is a very natural emotion and even Beatty, who tries to explain things to Montag and discourages books, even admits to looking a few books but says “I've had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing!” I believe that this would make Montag even more curious.
As I have mentioned, Montag is like all the others at the commencement of the novel: loving his job, never questioning an authority that has never given him any reason to obey. This all changes though when, while walking home from work, he encounters a young girl named Clarisse, who, through her innocence and oblivion to the world around her, shows him that society is crumbling around him and that he can be a part of the solution, not as everyone else is-the problem. For the first time in his life, he questions what he sees around him: his wife overdosing on pills, Clarisse getting hit by a speeding car and killed, and even the book burning which he does every night for money. Or was it amusement? Either way, curiosity gets the better of him as he "steals" a book from a raging fire during one of his raids.
Faber,a english professor, has a very important part on Montag’s view throughout the book. “Again he found himself thinking of the green pask a year ago.”(70). Bradbury used the old man to be as Montag’s alter ego or conscience, the person that he was trying to get to help him understand how to understand the books. After the interaction with Faber Montag goes back home to see Mildred’s friends and he reads them a part in some poetry he learned “Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore….”(96). Bradbury put this in the 2nd part because at first Montag didn't understand the books at first and he didn’t have the bravery to read in front of people, but he read it in front of MIllie’s friends. In part 3 we meet Granger a hobo as they say in Montag's society, another man that wants to ask why and how. He also influences Montag to wait for the war to end so they can spread their knowledge of the books they memorized. He also made Montag realize that he wasn’t providing anything for his community “What did you give to the city, Montag?.... Ashes….” (149). It also surprised Montag when Granger knew how the system worked and he didn’t “See that?...it’ll be you; right up at the end….” (141). Granger and Faber played a significant role in Montag’s “new life” by teaching him new
When we discover that Guy Montag is unhappy with his life, we start to respect that he is trying to change his way of life. When Montag goes to talk to his wife about the disadvantages about being a fireman, she offers no sympathy and tells him to stay away from her because all she knows is that books are unlawful. After awhile, Captain Beatty has a talk with Montag because he is suspicious of Montag's behavior. He tells Montag that the ideas in books are not real and they cause a dispute in people's minds. He says that ridding the world of controversy puts an end to dispute and allows people to live happy. Later on, Montag confesses that he had not just stolen one book but yet a small library.
Throughout the Star Wars saga, Anakin Skywalker undergoes a major personality change. He transforms from an aspiring youth into the Padawan of Obi-Wan Kenobi, finally becoming a Sith Lord. He accomplished all of this in three movies. Obi-Wan inspired the young Anakin to become a Jedi Knight and Darth Sidious convinced him to transfer loyalties to the Dark Side of the Force. Skywalker also shows how a single idea can change all of a character’s life. One of Ray Bradbury’s classics, from three-fifths of a century ago, contains a character who changes in reverse of that of Anakin. Guy Montag, from Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, undergoes an alteration from bad to good in his book. Montag experiences a character change from
“It’s not just the woman that died,’ said Montag.” “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I’ve 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 the books. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I’d never thought that before” (49).
Guy Montag is a fireman who is greatly influenced in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451. The job of a fireman in this futuristic society is to burn down houses with books in them. Montag has always enjoyed his job, that is until Clarisse McClellan comes along. Clarisse is seventeen and crazy. At least, this is what her uncle, whom she gets many of her ideas about the world from, describes her as. Clarisse and Montag befriend each other quickly, and Clarisse's impact on Montag is enormous. Clarisse comes into Montag's life, and immediately begins to question his relationship with his wife, his career, and his happiness. Also, Clarisse shows Montag how to appreciate the simple things in life. She teaches him to care about other people and their feelings. By the end of the novel, we can see that Montag is forever changed by Clarisse.
...ution to his dissatisfaction. Clarisse helped Montag get to this point he has finally realized the value that lies in these illegal books he reads.