Fahrenheit 451
Uploaded by Pyroflame21 on Oct 12, 2005
Fahrenheit 451
In Ray Bradbury’s book, Fahrenheit 451, the main character, Guy Montag, lives in a futuristic utopian society where books are banned. In this strange chaotic world Bradbury created, Montag is a fireman who, instead of putting out fires, is supposed to create them. This lifeless city in which he lives , has no independent thinking at all because if the people do speak up, they risk a chance of offending someone, so as a solution, thier population burnt the entire city’s books. They all perform their jobs like good little robots; go home, watch TV, and fall asleep. There is no need for worthwhile communication, just as long as they have enough money to keep their ignorance rate up (by paying their TV bills). No one wants to know the truth; they just want to doze off into a retarded coma and make their worries completely disappear. Throughout the story, Montag meets three people; Clarisse, Beatty, and Faber. They completely alter his outlook on life; as it is now, as it was, and as it should be. Bradbury clearly explains how Montag changes after knowing these people and how he experienced that life could be better.
Clarisse had an outstanding effect just because she was different, like a diamond among the coal; she showed him what it was like thinking for yourself, and not other people. Montag first meets Clarisse on a corner and they have a quite strange conversation about many random things in which one or two of them make him think. “What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show, anticipating each flicker of an eyelid, each gesture of his hand, each flick of a finger, the moment before it began. how long had they walked together? Three minutes? Five? Yet how large that time seemed now. How immense a figure she was on the stage before him; what a shadow she threw on the wall with her slender body!” (pg. 11) Bradbury demonstrates how one speck of independent thinking in a “one-way” society can trigger someone's’ complete mental evolution. In addition, change is apparent when he is talking with her for the second time, and she previously talks about the taste of rain, “How did it start? How did you get into it? How did you pick your work and...