Throughout the book, “Fahrenheit 451” we see many examples of the Monomyth. The three stages of the Monomyth are Departure, Initiation, and Return. Montag follows each of these stages throughout the story and the Monomyth is described through the actions that take place. The first stage is Departure, it is demonstrated in the very beginning of the book when Montag is at work like normal and witnesses the woman who kills herself. Before this occurred Montag actually somewhat liked and enjoyed his job and was never curious about books. The fact that this woman was willing to die for the books she had, rather than live, fascinated him and caused him to steal a book. “’You weren’t there, you didn’t see’ he said. ‘There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a …show more content…
burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing (51).’” The fact that she lights her own match and kills herself confuses Montag so much that he has to know what’s in books to cause such a reaction.
It is because of this that Montag is led into Initiation and ends up following into the rest of the Monomyth. Montag goes through Initiation when he takes the books and associates with Faber and they plan on how to destroy the firemen and get people to be more intrigued with and want to read books again. Along the way Montag fails by making mistakes such as revealing he has books and reading poetry to his neighbor. This causes Beatty to come after Montag and make him burn his own house down. “On the way downtown, he was so completely alone with his terrible error that he felt the necessity for the strange warmness and goodness that came from a familiar and gentle voice speaking in the night (102).” This shows how Montag made a mistake and he realized this too late. Part of the Initiation process is making mistakes along the way and realizing these mistakes. It is necessary for these errors to happen so that he can undergo the rest of the Monomyth process and to complete the last stage which is to
Return. Montag returns when he discovers the bands of people along the railroad tracks who have all remembered books and keep the contents in their heads. It is their hope that one day they will be able to pass on the books to future generations. By finding these people Montag feels like he finally has somewhere he belongs and he finally feels some sort of happiness, which he had been lacking his whole life. In the end, after the city burns, they finally head back towards the city to see the destruction. Part of the Return procedure is finding happiness and then going back home, which is what Montag undergoes. “I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it’ll all gather together inside and it’ll be me (162).” Montag is finally starting to discover who he really is and is starting to realize what he needs in his life to be happy and to move on, he is discovering who he is and what he wants in life, and this is a key part of the Return. It is through these several actions that we see the Monomyth portrayed in Fahrenheit 451. The Departure, Initiation, and Return are all very obvious throughout the story and it is through Montag and the actions he took and the choices that we see the Monomyth play out the way it does.
In every book, characters go through times where they challenge themselves. In Fahrenheit 451, a book written by Ray Bradbury in October 1953 Guy Montag faces several challenges throughout the book, just like any other character, but every event he faces changes him, his way of thinking, how he sees his surroundings, and even starts to doubt if the people closest to him are actually good people. Montag changes a lot, and his experiences and events faced lead to a new person.
These obstacles include going against what you thought you once were, and for Montag, that was a fireman who burned books. Bradbury portrays this when Montag says "I want to hold onto this funny thing. God, it's gotten big on me. I don't know what is it. I'm so unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why... I might even start reading books" (Bradbury 35). He later discovers that he is capable of using fire for good as well. "We don't choose the things we believe in; they choose us," a quote from the film illustrates this theme because it shows that people who are raised into a belief are closed-minded and unable to think for themselves.
In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by author Ray Bradbury we are taken into a place of the future where books have become outlawed, technology is at its prime, life is fast, and human interaction is scarce. The novel is seen through the eyes of middle aged man Guy Montag. A firefighter, Ray Bradbury portrays the common firefighter as a personal who creates the fire rather than extinguishing them in order to accomplish the complete annihilation of books. Throughout the book we get to understand that Montag is a fire hungry man that takes pleasure in the destruction of books. It’s not until interacting with three individuals that open Montag’s eyes helping him realize the errors of his ways. Leading Montag to change his opinion about books, and more over to a new direction in life with a mission to preserve and bring back the life once sought out in books. These three individual characters Clarisse McClellan, Faber, and Granger transformed Montag through the methods of questioning, revealing, and teaching.
In class we read the book Fahrenheit 451. The main character Montag has several qualities that change his views and decisions throughout the book. In the beginning of the story Montag was very confirmative and just went along with everything the government and didn’t really question anything but by the end of the book he was completely different. He had changed his views completely. One reason that motivated Montag to change so drastically was his curiosity. This caused him to question things and that led to some of his other qualities such as his open-mindedness. Questioning everything and talking to new people for information allowed Montag to become more open-minded and become open to more ideas. Another quality that Montag has that lead to his in change in the story was his change over time was his childhood memories.
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.
Montag enjoys reading books but also he likes to destroy them. "It was a pleasure to burn" (Bradbury 1"). This evidence shows a contradiction in his interests. Ray Bradbury has pointed out how ironic this is. "Guy Montag joyously goes about his job of burning down a house found to contain books, and Bradbury describes Montag's hands with majestic irony" (Mcgiveron 1). Here we see his obvious conflict of interests. Montag does not realize what he is doing at first. Early in the story Montag does not yet recognize the true destruction of his profession. (Explicitor 1). It takes awhile for him to realize what he is doing. Montag has some major conflict of interests. In the 1950's Ray Bradbury the novel Fahrenheit 451 which pointed out his views about on censorship his views are still effectively received today. His story shows a society obsessed with technology, which is not all that different to present day's society. His choice to include a variety of literary techniques to help the reader grasp the novels true meanings. Bradbury used techniques such as situational irony, dynamic characterization, Character motivation, censorship, and symbolism to convey his story effectively. Next we see Bradbury challenges us to think critically about what everything
In the book Fahrenheit 451 , Montag undergoes major character development. He started from a weak, dependant individual, who could at most think for himself. Throughout the book, he slowly found more and more flaws in the society he had blindly trusted. At the end of the book, Montag is a strong-minded, focused individual who is not afraid to stand up for his opinion, but cares for his life. Montag sacrificed everything in his life (including his life) to stand up for his opinions, which he could never have done in the beginning of the book. Everything Montag did had a reason and he changed because of those actions.
You take advantage of your life every day. Have you ever wondered why? You never really think about how much independence you have and how some of us treat books like they’re useless. What you don’t realize is that both of those things are the reason that we live in such a free society. If we didn’t have books and independence, we would treat death and many other important things as if it were no big deal. That is the whole point of Ray Bradbury writing this book.
In Federalist 10 James Madison argued that while factions are inevitable, they might have interests adverse to the rights of other citizens. Madison’s solution was the implementation of a Democratic form of government. He felt that majority rule would not eliminate factions, but it would not allow them to be as powerful as they were. With majority rule this would force all parties affiliate and all social classes from the rich white to the poor minorities to work together and for everyone’s opinion and views to be heard.
To start, the novel Fahrenheit 451 describes the fictional futuristic world in which our main protagonist Guy Montag resides. Montag is a fireman, but not your typical fireman. In fact, firemen we see in our society are the ones, who risk their lives trying to extinguish fires; however, in the novel firemen are not such individuals, what our society think of firemen is unheard of by the citizens of this futuristic American country. Instead firemen burn books. They erase knowledge. They obliterate the books of thinkers, dreamers, and storytellers. They destroy books that often describe the deepest thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Great works such as Shakespeare and Plato, for example, are illegal and firemen work to eradicate them. In the society where Guy Montag lives, knowledge is erased and replaced with ignorance. This society also resembles our world, a world where ignorance is promoted, and should not be replacing knowledge. This novel was written by Ray Bradbury, He wrote other novels such as the Martian chronicles, the illustrated man, Dandelion wine, and something wicked this way comes, as well as hundreds of short stories, he also wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV. In this essay three arguments will be made to prove this point. First the government use firemen to get rid of books because they are afraid people will rebel, they use preventative measures like censorship to hide from the public the truth, the government promotes ignorance to make it easier for them to control their citizens. Because the government makes books illegal, they make people suppress feelings and also makes them miserable without them knowing.
The North Korean government is known as authoritarian socialist; one-man dictatorship. North Korea could be considered a start of a dystopia. Dystopia is a community or society where people are unhappy and usually not treated fairly. This relates how Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 shows the readers how a lost of connections with people and think for themselves can lead to a corrupt and violent society known as a dystopia.
Furthermore, Montag’s identity changes with the burning of the old woman which shook him to the core causing him to steal the Bible. However, Montag relays his curiosity, he has found with books to his wife, Mildred, “You weren't there, you didn't see," he said. "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing” (Bradbury 48). In fact, this was the first instance Montag realizes that the burning of books such as Whitman, Faulkner and Millay is wrong, but also showcases how curiosity has killed the liking of his job. Curiosity has killed Montag’s relationship with himself. Although, Montag changes as a person, one of the most drastic relationship changes came from Montag and Beatty. In previous sections, Beatty is described to have been curious about the books when he was younger just like Montag now. Furthermore, these two seem to form a bound right away, however; this bond is broken when Beatty betrays Montag by bringing Montag back to his home to light it on fire. Instead, Montag kills Beatty with the
People nowadays have lost interest in books because they see it as a waste of time and useless effort, and they are losing their critical thinking, understanding of things around them, and knowledge. Brown says that Bradbury suggests that a world without books is a world without imagination and its ability to find happiness. The people in Fahrenheit 451 are afraid to read books because of the emotions that they will receive by reading them and claim them as dangerous. Bradbury hopes to reinstate the importance of books to the people so that they can regain their “vital organ of thinking.” In Fahrenheit 451, Montag steals a book when his hands act of their own accord in the burning house, regaining his ability to read and think on his own (Bradbury 34-35; Brown 2-4; Lee 3; Patai 1, 3).
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.
Some characters like Montag did not succumb to the ignorance of society. Unlike Mildred characters like Montag believed in the power books and knowledge. Montag was once like Mildred until he met Clarisse; his neighbor. Clarisse was different from anyone Montag had ever met. She made him question his career, his happiness and even his marriage. After talking to Clarisse, Montag realizes he’s been ignorant for his whole life and begins a dangerous search for knowledge. After eventually stealing a book and reading it Montag realized that knowledge is really important. Books symbol knowledge because they provide their readers with information they did not know prior to opening the book. Montag no longer believed that ignorance was bliss “”. Through Montag’s fight for knowledge Bradbury is able to help the readers to understand that people are afraid of knowledge because they fear making mistakes. “You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by” says Faber (Bradbury 104). Knowledge is gained from experience. The best and worst sides of Montag were revealed during his journey because he made mistakes and learned from them. At the end of the novel Montag like readers comes to the realization that knowledge and experiences is the true meaning of life.