Fahrenheit 451

The extraordinary story told in Fahrenheit 451 invites the reader to be curious about a world in which all Americans achieve their dreams and are happy. To accomplish this, we must destroy all written material containing any information that is biased (controversial), for or against an issue. For example, smoking creates the dilemma of whether or not smoking is good for health, which creates difficulties between smokers and nonsmokers, making them unhappy. The American government sends firemen to burn all the books that people have, in order to avoid disputes among minorities. Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is to burn books. However, Montag faces a great conflict between destroying or keeping the books to learn. Each of these views is exemplified by three characters: his boss who insists on burning books, his wife, who does not like books and Clarisse, who defends their usefulness.

Captain Beatty, supports the idea that books make others unhappy, because reading them make people confront different ideas, this leads to large differences and thus disagreement between people. For example, Beatty tells Montag that if we read about dogs then we offend those who want to read about cats. Also, if we read about Asians the rest of the world would feel unimportant. Beatty, also, tells Montag that the government was not the one that started burning the books. It was the very same people, who gradually ceased to read, analyze, relate and think abstractly; so when the government began to burn books, no one noticed. Therefore, the Captain is trying to persuade Montag to continue burning books, in order to prevent future problems. But, internally, Montag was not convinced by the ideas that Beatty explained to him.

The second person that...

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...tal importance of books in human life, and values of a society bent on destroying them, ironically convinced that that will lead to happiness in people. Through the arguments of the three people closest to Montag, he tries to resolve the conflict: whether to stop or continue to burn books. Beatty, his boss and Mildred, his wife, would bring a number of arguments that support the further burning of books because it will make people happier. Montag, however, does not convince himself until he meets Clarisse, his neighbor. She offers him the reasons why he should not continue to burn books. Montag, then touches his own ideas which are consistent with those of Clarisse, that is, to start to understand why they should not burn books. Thus Montag resolves his conflict by giving up his job as a firefighter, although in the end he is evading it rather than solving it.