Fahrenheit 451 Writing Assignment In my opinion, the character in the book Fahrenheit 451 that is the most flawed is Captain Beatty. This character is very stubborn, he is ruthless, and self-serving. He is the head firemen in a world where they didn't put fires out, but they burned books which, in result, hurt many people. After Montag had burned Captain Beatty's body, he got the last laugh and said to him "You always said don't face a problem, burn it. Well now I've done both. Goodbye, Captain." on page 121. Captain Beatty was the type of person to ignore every problem and push the contradictory things out of the way. Literature is like that, it is upsetting, confusing, and often times will pull the rug out from under
your feet. However, Captain Beatty never really understood that reading isn't even about what the books say, it is for questioning and thinking for yourself. This made Captain Beatty very stubborn. That makes him different from Montag, because he isn't even willing to do the thinking. He turned books down and never looked back or tried to reason with people who loved books. Another word to describe this character, who is the antagonist of the story, is ruthless. I noticed while reading how he never seemed to really feel bad when he would burn someone's home or belongings. He was never flexible in being forgiving if someone broke the rules by reading/owning any book. His sole purpose is to sniff out and destroy books, no matter what the people will lose. Lastly, throughout the book there are many times where Captain Beatty is very self-serving. This also relates to being ruthless in that he did not care the impact of what his fires would do. He took away the ability to think freely by taking away literature and was not understanding of others in the process. Many people tried to hide the books and all of the firemen had special ways of finding them and they would throw the books in piles to burn them. Even when the owners of those books would plead for mercy, they didn't care. In conclusion, Captain Beatty is the antagonist of this book and of course has many flaws including being stubborn, ruthless, and selfish. Being the head firemen, he started the cruel law against literature which shows his evil character.
The three words I've chosen as effective diction are 'Me?', 'sizzling,' and 'Yes.' I chose these words because they seemed either to reflect Beatty's blunt and definitive manner, or the author's use of personification and imagery. The first one ('Me?'), is in the 14th line, Beatty uses this as a rebuttal to himself, when referring to a well-read man. He tells Montag that he won't stomach it for a minute. This helps the reader see his objective manner and further understand Beatty as a character and as a person. The next term ('sizzling'), refers to the fireworks seen on the screen in Montag's home. This helps give the reader imagine the scene and helps us understand how realistic the image is, as well as how far technology has come. The final
Beatty is arguably the most complex character in Fahrenheit 451. Beatty has a strong relationship with the fire, supposedly believing that it is pure and is good. When Montag calls in sick, Beatty guesses why he would ...
...vel FAHRENHEIT 451, the main character is influenced by many different sources. Bradbury writes of a fire fighter that has realized that the society he lives in isn’t right and makes the protagonist want to make a change. Guy Montag is influenced by a teenage girl that makes him realize the beauty’s of the world. Guy is also influenced by a fire that burns a woman alive. Montag steals a book from that fire and that is the beginning of when he begins his mission to find out why his society has become the way it is, and his greater mission of changing society so that everyone in it can think for themselves. Captain Beatty is one of the greatest influences in Guy’s life because of his knowledge, the information of Clarisse’s death and when guy is forced to murder the fire captain. Making Montag’s greatest influences, Clarisse, the fire on Elm Street and Captain Beatty.
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).
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.
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.
My first reason is when Montag killed Beatty. Montag is not a bad person because he killed Beatty. On page 116 in the book it states that Montag had realized that Beatty had wanted to die which would explain why he kept provoking Montag when they were outside of Montag’s house. So when Montag killed Beatty it was because Beatty had wanted to die not because Montag had wanted to kill him. My second reason is when Montag was in the house with the woman who chose to stay. Montag could have easily left the woman in the house not even trying to not even trying to save her from her house that was about to go up in flames, and he only left when she told him to go and that she wanted to stay in that house. Clearly, I have stated why Montag’s actions and thoughts do not make him a bad
Captain Beatty believes society is filled with nothing more than non-thinkers. He says people who are infatuated with books are insane. He believes that there is no need for school because no one needs to think. The only priority in life is to have fun and stay busy. To keep from having controversy, everyone has to be alike and the same. You do not have the right to be yourself. Captain Beatty says the society makes you and all the population be the same. No one can be unique. He says the firemen are custodians. They are to clean up the things (books) that make people feel inferior or that go against the Government. lastly , Captain Beatty says the only purpose in life is to stay active and to stay contempt. He basically sees society as one
... a flamethrower at his adversary, Beatty simply “just stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there, joking, needling” (122). Beatty ultimately gives up his life to Montag, bereft of true passion and joy in life.
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
Beatty is talking about how a book can have a load of meaning and significance but he has to say it like this because he does not want to give away his big secret about him reading books. When Beatty is talking about the Constitution he is trying to talk about how this Constitution relates to people in this society and their “TV families”. Beatty wants to teach Montag as much stuff about books as he can before he moves on. So Beatty tries to lecture Montag on what kind of people they are and how 1 person could change the course of a society forever. “Lecture's over. I hope I've clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we're the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dyke. Hold Steady. Don't let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don't think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now"(59). When Beatty is trying to tell Montag how important he is and how people like him are important. He said that people who conflicted with theory and thought made other people unhappy. Beatty was reading books at this time and he knew that there was no way he could escape this society and this leads to my claim which is Beatty did want to die. When Montag was
One can consider Beatty to be a person who seems to be too smart to be a fireman who “hates” books. Throughout the story, Beatty pokes at the fact that Montag is changing and fires back with his high intellectual thoughts about feeling and emotion coming from Montag. Beatty makes the lengthiest and talks the most throughout the story and all of which ridicule books and who they are bad for everyone. “If you don’t want a man unhappy poetically, don’t give him one. Better yet, give him non. Let him forget there is such thing as war (58). This quote is Beatty ranting on against people having the ability to think at all. Beatty is explaining how burning books also burns any choice that people are left to make. He feels that society and all its people are better off when there is no choice to make, regardless the situation. Beatty is under the impression that people are indeed happier when there is no decision making.
Fahrenheit 451 is a best-selling American novel written by Ray Bradbury. The novel is about firemen Guy Montag and his journey on discovering the importance of knowledge in an ignorant society. There are many important themes present throughout the novel. One of the most distinct and reoccurring themes is ignorance vs knowledge. Bradbury subtly reveals the advantage and disadvantages of knowledge and ignorance by the contrasting characters Montag and his wife Mildred. Montag symbolizes knowledge while Mildred on the other hand symbolizes ignorance.
...t… Serenity, Montag. Peace Montag. Take your fight outside. Better yet, into the incinerator” (Bradbury 57). Basically Beatty is telling Montag instead of dealing with problems that he should just burn them, which is probably why this society is bad. Covering up the cause for a problem never solves it. In Fahrenheit 451 thinking independently is frowned upon. Individuals are individuals not matter what the government want them to be. Removing free will of individual thinking caused an unmotivated society. The taking away of creativity and individuality created disorder out of a process to make order.