Fire is one of, if not the, main motif that Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury revolves around. The world that Montag lives in is dominated by fire. As Montag said, “The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant.that everything burned!” Ray Bradbury clearly conveys in this passage that Montag thinks that fire is very important and that it is something that everything revolves around. Ray Bradbury also talks about the idea of something burning, and that once you completely burn something, it is gone and there is no going back to get it. Just like time, books that are burned can not be retrieved no matter how hard you may try. In this quote, Ray Bradbury is also referencing how Montag has a sudden revelation at the time that he says this quote. This happens many times during the novel, and fire really is the main idea that changes Montag and all the other characters in Fahrenheit 451. Understandably, at the beginning of the novel, Montag is very proud to be a fireman. It is one of the few jobs in the society, and he takes a certain primal joy in doing it. However, there is a specific moment in the beginning of the book when Montag begins to realize that maybe there is something bad with burning down houses and killing people because they had books. On page 40 Ray Bradbury writes, “The woman on the porch reached out with contempt to them all and struck the kitchen match against the railing.” When any other fireman burns a house, they enjoy destroying it. Everyone else on the street also comes out to watch because they think of it as a carnival, a somewhat rare event that e... ... middle of paper ... ... at all, but cruel and unjust. This is further proved when Beatty forces Montag to burn his own house down. Doing this was a critical mistake for Beatty, as Montag was already in a stage of emotional turmoil, and by forcing him to burn his house down, Beatty pushed Montag over the edge, and killed himself. Finally, when the hound is released on Montag, the book begins to get interesting. This can be viewed as just a fun scene to speed up the action in a book that lacks a lot of it, but it also represents how everything is full of action for the people in the book. They are either driving 100 miles an hour, or watching a house burn, just like they are all watching the movie of their lives. Montag may have started out the book like that, but by the end he was so different from everyone else that the government killed an innocent man because they couldn’t catch Montag.
Fahrenheit 451 Montag, a fireman who ignites books into glowing embers that fall into ashes as black as night. In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, a message in which society has opened its doors to mass devastation. Guy Montag, a “fireman”, burns houses that have anything to do with books instead of putting fires out like the job of a real fireman. In Montag’s society, books are considered taboo, and owning books can lead to dire consequences. Ray Bradbury portrays a society in which humans have suffered a loss of self, humanity, and a powerful control from the government resulting in a fraudulent society.
In the end of the book we learn that the city Montag once lived in has been destroyed. It’s here where we get the end result of Montag, the man who once took special pleasure in destroying books now takes pleasure in preserving them. If not for Clarisse who opened his eyes to the truth through questioning life, or Faber who revealed the truth and magic in the books, and Granger who taught Montag how to preserve the books Montag could have very well been a victim of his cities destruction. It’s clear that Montag was heavily influenced by these three Individuals changing him from a once law abiding citizen of the futuristic government to a refugee of the law discovering reasons worth fighting for regardless of outcome.
Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, is based in a futuristic time where technology rules our everyday lives and books are viewed as a bad thing because it brews free thought. Although today’s technological advances haven’t caught up with Bradbury’s F451, there is a very real danger that society might end up relying on technology at the price of intellectual development. Fahrenheit 451 is based in a futuristic time period and takes place in a large American City on the Eastern Coast. The futuristic world in which Bradbury describes is chilling, a future where all known books are burned by so called "firemen." Our main character in Fahrenheit 451 is a fireman known as Guy Montag, he has the visual characteristics of the average fireman, he is tall and dark-haired, but there is one thing which separates him from the rest of his colleagues. He secretly loves books.
“Banning books gives us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” -Stephen Chbosky. Fire has many symbolic meanings throughout the novel and throughout history. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, he uses fire symbolism to represent Montag’s view of fire throughout the novel. Warmth, purification, and censorship are symbolic meanings of fire relating to Montag’s journey throughout the story.
The book “Fahrenheit 451,” by Ray Bradbury, is about a man, Guy Montag, who has a job burning books. When he realizes how twisted the world he lives in is, he tries to change it, although he doesn’t really succeed. In the novel, the author uses the metaphor of fire to make the narrative more interesting. When the author uses a fire metaphor, it often seems very exciting and dramatic. Additionally, they are used to show emotion. The metaphors also make the novel feel more violent.
A politically correct world. No one can be offended, the press cannot report on offensive subjects, history books need to change or write out offensive past events, and books that have any form of offensive opinions needs to be gone. In fact, opinions are to offensive, they are not allowed. This is what happened in the fictional world of Fahrenheit 451. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is about government censorship of opinions and trying to make everyone have the same opinion. However, Bradbury is also sending messages saying that technology will turn everyday people’s lives into a zoo, and the zoo keeper who feeds them is the government. The rise of technology will lead into people being oblivious to the corruption
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
Firefighters are humans whose job are to stop a fire from houses buildings stores schools and etc. but sadly in the society of 451 it’s not like that. You create the fire. As a firefighter in the society of 451, Montag a firefighter unsure about his feelings is questioning himself. If what he is doing is right. Is Montag feeling guilty for everything he has done? The government is so strict about the rule that they will do anything to remove books and take away everyone knowledge. The government will do anything to burn books.
The symbolism of fire throughout the novel, Fahrenheit 451, symbolizes both destruction and renewal. As time went on Montag soon realizes the destruction of books was taking away key parts of a normal society. Montag’s view of fire changes throughout the novel as in the beginning he sees it as a symbol of change and in the end fire engulfs his house and he then uses it against the enemies.
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 role that fire plays in Fahrenheit 451 is apparent from the very beginning of Bradbury's novel. "IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN. It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed" (3). In these first two sentences, Bradbury creates a sense of curiosity and irony because in the story, change is something controlled and unwanted by the government and society, so it is very unlikely that anything in Guy Montag's society could be changed. The burning described at this point represents the constructive energy that later leads to catastrophe. A clear picture of firemen is first seen when the narrator says, "With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black" (3). Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature at which books burn and is symbolically written on the firemen’s helmets, tanks, and in the firestation.
Fire is also referenced throughout the book as a symbol of destruction, connecting to the theme of change, but when preventing change. When one thinks of fire, they think of destruction that is the meaning conveyed from the man-made fire in the book. The fire in the society is used to burn books but on another level, it is linked to the destructive ways of the society. When looking at the women in his society, Montag sees “these women twisting in their chairs under his gaze, lighting cigarettes, blowing smoke, touching their sun-fired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire from his look. Their faces grew haunted with silence” (Bradbury 92). The fire represents how the ways of the society are killing its citizens,
At the beginning of the story, Montag is emotionally stable. It is evident that he is happy with his job when he says, “Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me.” He describes their routine as “Well, it's a job just like any other. Good work with lots of variety. Monday, we burn Miller; Tuesday, Tolstoy; Wednesday, Walt Whitman; Friday, Faulkner; and Saturday and Sunday, Schopenhauer and Sartre. We burn them to ashes and then burn the ashes. That's our official motto.” However, as soon as he meets his new neighbor, Clarisse, he is forever changed. She describes a time when people actually read books, a time when you could think freely. She then moves on to question whether or not Montag is really happy. Although Montag does not immediately realize it, he is not happy. This becomes evident when he vomits at the scent of kerosene after returning home from burning a woman’s home. When faced with challenges, Montag becomes irritated. This is especially evident at the end of the story when Beatty confronts Montag outside of his house. Montag burns him and knocks out the other firemen. However, he mourns his death and realizes that he did in fact want to die.
At the beginning of the novel, Montag considers it a pleasure to burn due to the power it gave him. For Montag, burning was the only thing he knew, and to him the only way of life. Getting to be apart of the wonderful experience of helping your government made Montag feel important, being able to help out. It also let him have control over the fire, which all means for him burning is a good thing.