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Character development introduction
Character development introduction
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“Our Civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge” (Bradbury, 84). The novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a comment on the habit of mankind to destroy itself, only to pop right back up from the ashes. The main character, Guy Montag, represents the parts of mankind that are becoming aware of this, through awareness, change through tragedy and obligation to spread both the former. At first Montag is unaware of the true nature of his surroundings and feelings. “‘Bet i know something else you don't. There's dew on the grass in the morning.’ Montag suddenly couldn't remember if he’d known that or not, and it made him quite irritable.” (Bradbury, 7). The conversation serves to highlight his willful ignorance, the amount of things he simply never thought to realize, that existed just under his radar. …show more content…
“I saw the damndest snake in the world the other night… you want to see that snake? It’s at Emergency Hospital where they filed the report on all the junk the snake got out of you!... would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake the ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue!” (Bradbury, 69). All these tragedies serve to anger Montag, to motivate him to break through the surgery, rhinestone cage of his previously worldly
The novel "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury correlates with the 2002 film "Minority Report" because of the similarities between characters, setting and imagery, and thematic detail.
“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).
285). Work concerning apocalyptic situations, in most cases, see little hope for the earth. The rhetoric within these texts clearly distinguishes between the good and bad: ‘technology is bad, nature is good, humans are bad, animals are good’ (Nayar, 2010, p. 248). In Fahrenheit 451 Montag retreats to the countryside and discards the technology and values of his society. By leaving the city and returning to nature, Montag avoids the atomic warfare and destruction the city faces. While in the countryside with the men he met, they have limited technology and rather value literature and knowledge, values that are at odds with the society they left. The destruction of the city, which represented the technology and mass, consumer culture highlights the dichotomy of nature and technology. While nature is a continuous cycle of construction and destruction, technology only focuses on the
Montag is different than others around him. McGiveron said “An insanity of mindlessness” (Mcgiveron 1). This is the world Montag lives in. He is not alike his peers at all. “Montag has a conscience and a curiosity” (McGiveron 1). This shows he has a special set of traits that is rare in this society. Montag moves past things much better than those around him. An example of this is “even when Montag finally kills the taunting beatty he displaces him syntactically from the center of the action.” (McGiveron 2). Here we see the relentlessness of Montag. To include Montag is special compared to the rest of his dystopian
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.
Fahrenheit 451’s Relevance to Today Fahrenheit 451’s relevance to today can be very detailed and prophetic when we take a deep look into our American society. Although we are not living in a communist setting with extreme war waging on, we have gained technologies similar to the ones Bradbury spoke of in Fahrenheit 451 and a stubborn civilization that holds an absence of the little things we should enjoy. Bradbury sees the future of America as a dystopia, yet we still hold problematic issues without the title of disaster, as it is well hidden under our democracy today. Fahrenheit 451 is much like our world today, which includes television, the loss of free speech, and the loss of the education and use of books. Patai explains that Bradbury saw that people would soon be controlled by the television and saw it as the creators chance to “replace lived experience” (Patai 2).
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.
One time that Montag starts to show his rebelling and questioning his own knowledge is, ‘“ Why don’t you just read use one of the poems from your little book.” Mrs. Phelps nodded. “ I think that’d be very interesting.” “ That’s not right,” wailed Mrs. Bowles. “ We can’t do that!”’(page 98). In this part of the story Montag wants to read them a peice of poetry to show them that it’s not like what the society told them it was like. We see to totally different reactions in this
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...
“’Bet I know something else you don’t. There dew on the grass in the morning’ He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable” (Bradbury, 7). After this encounter,r Clarisse leaves Montag with a question whether he was happy or not. Immediately he thought he was but under further consideration he began to doubt himself and if he was happy or not. This doubting was a turning point for Montag, he began seeking answers and knowledge which he ends up looking for within literature. Montag soon after finds the joy and positive outcomes within literature while going against societal standards. Ray Bradbury hereby shows his concern of the preservation of information, specifically in this case, his regards to a downfall of literature. Authors like Bradbury not only rely on literature for their jobs, they also see the benefits it can bring to mental health and development. A large amount of the information that is passed down today is information that lies within great works of literature that would be destroyed by the totalitarian government within Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit
Montag never appreciated the simple things in life. He would never walk or drive slow enough to see the colors of things. This bothered Clarisse McClellan very much. She loved to catch raindrops on her tongue, and she always left little presents for Montag to make sure he appreciated these simple things. Through her spirit and her small simple presents, Montag finds the strength to also appreciate these things.“And then very slowly as he walked, he tilted his head back in the rain for just a few moments and opened his mouth..”(Bradbury 24). Montag begins to see that no matter how hard life gets, he will always have these smaller things that he can enjoy.
Are you really happy? Or are you sad about something? Sad about life or money, or your job? Any of these things you can be sad of. Most likely you feel discontentment a few times a day and you still call yourself happy. These are the questions that Guy Montag asks himself in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In this book people are thinking they are happy with their lives. This is only because life is going so fast that they think they are but really there is things to be sad about. Montag has finally met Clarisse, the one person in his society that stops to smell the roses still. She is the one that gets him thinking about how his life really is sad and he was just moving too fast to see it. He realizes that he is sad about pretty much everything in his life and that the government tries to trick the people by listening to the parlor and the seashells. This is just to distract people from actual emotions. People are always in a hurry. They have 200 foot billboards for people driving because they are driving so fast that they need more time to see the advertisement. Now I am going to show you who are happy and not happy in the book and how our society today is also unhappy.
Thomas Gray, a poet from the eighteenth century, coined the phrase “Ignorance is bliss” in his poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742), and three centuries later, this quote is commonly used to convey the message that sometimes, being ignorant of the truth can cause happiness, and knowledge can actually can be the source of pain or sadness. However, in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this phrase is taken very literally, and knowledge is feared to the extent where books are considered illegal. Throughout The Hearth and the Salamander, Guy Montag, the main character, experiences a drastic change wherein he begins to realize that there is power in knowledge, and that this intelligence has the potential to be worth more than the so-called “bliss” that ignorance can bring.
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.
In the book, Fahrenheit 451,written by Ray Bradbury, he had put in literary devices to help readers understand what is going on throughout the context of the story. The literary devices used in the book were imagery and personification. These literary devices will help shows how technology ruins personal relationships.