Jalen Blanchard
Mrs. Shay
English II
13, January 2013
Guy Montag and The Changing World Around Him
People change and so does the world. Nothing stays the same and that’s why we are what we are now. Montag is not the same as he was at the beginning of the story. One of Bradbury’s best novels Fahrenheit 451, Montag is set on achieving his goals no matter what he has to do. Guy Montag changes himself but not in the way that he would have thought of, he is still the same person, but with different beliefs.
At the start of the novel, Montag is a fireman who loves his job. Firemen in this society do not put out fires, they start them. They burn all books and houses with books, and whoever chooses to stay with the books. It is easy to tell the Guy loves his job by the way that he lingers in the firehouse after a long days work. He takes his time in the shower, then he carefully hangs up his equipment and takes his time walking home (Bradbury 2.) Montag is the way he thinks he wants to be and he does not believe that anything could change him. He is unwilling to change his ways because he is happy the way he is, and he thinks he is living life the way it should be lived. Until a young woman named Clarisse talks to him, that at first he thinks she is stupid and not worth his time, but little does he know that this one girl has already begun to change his whole viewpoint on the meaning of life.
As time goes on Montag starts to question life and his attitude about everything that he thought was correct before just doesn’t seem right anymore. He is bothered by Clarisse’s death and has no one to go to for advice and guidance, until he finds a new mentor Faber. Faber helps him not only question the things he used to believe, but he explains ...
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...yone change that. He is standing up for what is right and he won’t let anybody change that. Montag has changed his whole perspective. He was thinking about his wife when the town went up in flames, but he and his newly found friends were all a little sad, they just watched their whole lives disappear. They all knew things would be better and different though, and they just wanted to move on.
Montag changes himself in just the way he thinks, he is the same person, but with different beliefs. He is still the confident, outgoing, smart guy he was before the he met Clarisse. But instead of changing all of that, he changed his beliefs. He was still very outspoken, just about his new belief. His whole life turned upside down, but he still managed to keep his same morals as a person. So is he really a different person, or is has his eyes just been opened up to the world?
People can change due to the influence of other people. Guy Montag changes from being a book burning monster to an independent knowledge seeker due to the influences of Clarisse McClellan. Montag in Fahrenheit 451 by: Ray Bradbury shows how he acted before he changed, after meeting Clarisse, and after meeting Faber.
Therefore, these three experiences or people help make Montag a dynamic character. These people or events all affect him in a different way. He learns a lot from them. Montag would have said that they made a huge impact on his life, because he feels different emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. Don’t forget, Montag went from burning books to preventing books being burned. It takes a lot of courage and inspiration for the Montag from the beginning of the novel, to become the Montag he was at the end of the novel.
In this section of the book Montag’s character starts to think and change. He starts to question society’s way of doing and handling things. In the book there are actually quite a few parallels with society today. Not quite to the same extent, however they are there. For example, in the book it is abnormal for anyone to just sit and talk about anything that actually matters; in our society, we
In the beginning of the book, Guy Montag never once thought of what his job really entailed or why he was burning houses and books down. Until one night, he met a girl named Clarice; the girl who changed everything. She might not have been in the book long but her character was essential. Clarice was the start of Montag slowly realizing what it exactly is that his job is making him do. “ ‘Do you mind if I ask? How long’ve you worked at being a fireman?’ ‘Since I was twenty, ten years ago.’ ‘Do you ever read any of the books you burn?’ He laughed. ‘That’s
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.
...radbury the protagonist Guy Montag had three mentors that helped him along his journey; Clarisse, Faber and Granger. Clarisse is the one who first opens his eyes to the world around him, Faber teaches him how he should approach this new way of thinking, and Granger establishes him as an intellectual who can help society rebuild after the destruction from the war. A line from the Book of Ecclesiastes Montag remembers very well sums up his transformation: “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (158) Now Montag is finally learning who he is and what he should do with his life; through his three mentors he has found his identity.
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.
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.
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.
When Montag meets Clarisse, his neighbor, he starts to notice that there is more to life than burning books. Montag states, “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I have used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of those books” (Bradbury 49). It begins to bother Montag that all he has done for the past years is burn books. He starts to rethink his whole life, and how he has been living it. Montag goes on to say, “It took some men a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life and then I come along in two minutes and boom! It is all over” (Bradbury 49) Before, Montag never cares about what he has been doing to the books, but when he begins to ignore the distractions and really think about life he starts to notice that he has been destroying some other mans work. Montag begins to think more of the world
In this paragraph I will be stating a couple reasons why Montag should be considered a ‘good guy’ or a hero. My first reason is when Montag and Clarisse are walking on the sidewalk she tells him that she has to go to a psychiatrist. Before they split up and go their separate ways she tells him that she sometimes forgets he is a fireman because of the way he acts around her. On page twenty one Clarisse starts to tell Montag that he isn't like the other firemen because when she talks he looks at her and listens while other
Later in the book Montag has a connection with nature and has a real connection with another person. Guy Montag ...
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
Guy Montag is a fireman who is greatly influenced in Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451. The job of a fireman in this futuristic society is to burn down houses with books in them. Montag has always enjoyed his job, that is until Clarisse McClellan comes along. Clarisse is seventeen and crazy. At least, this is what her uncle, whom she gets many of her ideas about the world from, describes her as. Clarisse and Montag befriend each other quickly, and Clarisse's impact on Montag is enormous. Clarisse comes into Montag's life, and immediately begins to question his relationship with his wife, his career, and his happiness. Also, Clarisse shows Montag how to appreciate the simple things in life. She teaches him to care about other people and their feelings. By the end of the novel, we can see that Montag is forever changed by Clarisse.