Guy Montag is the protagonist and fireman who presents the dystopia through the eyes of a worker loyal to it, a man in conflict about it, and one resolved to be free of it. Through most of the book, Montag lacks knowledge and believes what he hears. Clarisse McClellan walks with Montag on his trips home and is one month short of being a 17-year-old girl.[notes 3][24] She is an unusual sort of person in the bookless, hedonistic society: outgoing, naturally cheerful, unorthodox, and intuitive. She is unpopular among peers and disliked by teachers for asking "why" instead of "how" and focusing on nature rather than on technology. A few days after their first meeting, she disappears without any explanation; Mildred tells Montag (and Captain Beatty …show more content…
She is addicted to sleeping pills, absorbed in the shallow dramas played on her "parlor walls" (flat-panel televisions), and indifferent to the oppressive society around her. She is described in the book as "thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon." Despite her husband's attempts to break her from the spell society has on her, Mildred continues to be shallow and indifferent. After Montag scares her friends away by reading Dover Beach and unable to live with someone who has been hoarding books, Mildred betrays Montag by reporting him to the firemen and abandoning him. Captain Beatty is Montag's boss. Once an avid reader, he has come to hate books due to their unpleasant content and contradicting facts and opinions. In a scene written years later by Bradbury for the Fahrenheit 451 play, Beatty invites Montag to his house where he shows him walls of books left to molder on their shelves. Stoneman and Black are Montag's coworkers at the firehouse. They do not have a large impact on the story and function to show the reader the contrast between the firemen who obediently do as they're told and someone like Montag, who formerly took pride in his job—subsequently realizing how damaging it is to
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.
Although we cannot make people listen. They have to come around in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them, it can’t last. A quote by Ray Bradbury. Meanwhile, in the book, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, tells a story on how montag changed by the influences of the positive people in his society. The next paragraph will show what happened from the beginning and how he changed. Although today’s technological advances haven’t caught up with Bradbury’s F451, there is a very real danger that society might end up overly relying on technology at the price of intellectual development.
Mildred sounded the book alarm in her home, avenging Montag for not loving her and for putting her in danger (page 108). While Montag was hiding his secret library, he showed it to his wife, Mildred. Since libraries and books are illegal, Mildred felt unsafe. One day while Montag was at work, Mildred rang the alarm in their house, which called the firemen. Montag and the firemen came rushing to the house, not knowing it was Montag’s. Montag ended up burning his own house down, piece by piece, with a flamethrower.
Guy Montag is an ordinary fireman, whose job is to just simply burn books, and a follow the law,
In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury creates a world resembling our current world. This novel is about Montag, a fireman who burns books instead of preventing fires, because it is against the law to have books. Without the use of books, people are dumb, and they don’t know what they are talking about. Montag hates the idea of books, but throughout the novel he learns why they are necessary, resulting in him becoming a dynamic character. A definition of a dynamic character is a character that grows and changes throughout a story. At the end of the story, Montag changes emotionally and mentally. Three major events result in a dynamic change in Montag’s perspective.
As the story progresses, Montag’s relationship with the fire changes through his relationships. By meeting characters such as Clarisse, Beatty, and the academics, he learns to understand the fire after his whole society has collapsed around him. In the start, Guy believes that the fire is clean, then he started to realize how destructive it was, and only later did he find out that fire can provide the crucial life that people need.
Firstly, Montag is influenced by Clarisse McClellan because she is the first person he has met that is not like the rest of the society. Clarisse is a young 17 year old girl that Montag quickly becomes very fond of. Clarisse influences Montag by the way she questioned Montag, the way she admires nature, and her death. Clarisse first influenced Montag by the way she began questioning him often. Her questions would make him think for himself unlike the rest of society. “Then she seemed to remember something and came back to look at him with wonder and curiosity. “Are you happy?” she said. “Am I what?” he cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight” (Bradbury, 10). Clarisse was one of the only people that Montag had ever met that had ever asked him that. This question that she asked him influenced him because he thinks about, and Montag asks himself tha...
Clarisse McClellan, a unique outcast whose personality traits you could say has influenced Montag to question his life. During one night after work Montag has a little run in with this unique individual into which his transformation initiates. Montag and Clarisse share a conversation into which becomes a life changing experience for Montag, they talked about life and how it’s so different from the times long ago. However though towards the end of this fascinating conversation Clarisse asked Montag one last question right before taking off, she asked Montag this, “Are you happy?”(Bradbury 7). Montag hesitantly states that yes he was happy right when she took off. Later on that night we find out Montag’s wife Mildred had overdosed on ...
The questioning from Clarisse has led Montag to a loss of self-esteem. Clarisse, Montag’s new neighbor, starts a conversation with him. Clarisse has a different personality than the other people Montag knows at the fire station. She is very outgoing, likes nature, and is not into socializing. When Clarisse asks about Montag’s job, she says that Montag is a fireman without the typical fireman qualities.
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.
“One person’s craziness is another person’s reality”- Tim Burton. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the protagonist Guy Montag learns this as the book progresses. In the beginning of the book, he comes across situations that he finds preposterous, like the suggestion of reading books. In the end of the book, those unhinged ideas become his reality. As the book advances, we get glimpses of how Montag’s thoughts of society change. Guy Montag goes through a special character transformation throughout the book, starting as a loyal fireman and ending up as a book-reading rebel.
While many people might think that because Guy Montag started out as a firefighter he can not be considered a ‘good guy’ or a hero, but it should be noted that his thoughts and actions are those of a person with good intentions despite starting out as a ‘bad guy’. In my first paragraph I will be stating reasons on why guy Montag should be considered a good guy or a hero. In the second paragraph I will state why his actions and thoughts do not make him a bad person. Lastly, I will state why Montag's actions and thoughts make him a good person.
Clarisse McClellan is the spark, not the flame nor match of the novel. Her intelligence and optimistic mindset scares the rest of society away and they claim her to be “crazy” and “antisocial” because of it. But this does not bother Clarissa at all. If anything, she questions them and comes to very reasonable conclusions. For example, Bradbury 26 she differs from the others calling her “antisocial”. She states, “I am very social indeed… it all depends on what you mean by social. To me it is talking about how strange the world is. I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk.” She then goes into detail on how schools have you wrapped up on television and prefer to give the answers rather than to ask questions. These actions give off that
Montag then makes his escape from the city and finds the book people, who give him refuge from the firemen and Mechanical Hound that is searching for him. The burning of his house and his Captain as well as the fire trucks symbolizes Montag's transformation from a mechanical drone that follows orders, to a thinking, feeling, emotional person, who has now broken the law and will be hunted as a criminal. He is an enemy of the state; once he turns his back on the social order and burns his bridges, so to speak, he is set free, purified and must run for his life.... ... middle of paper ...
Montag is influenced by Clarisse a lot. And, her impact on him is tremendous. She questions his whole life, teaches him to appreciate the simple things, and to care about other people and their feelings. “You're peculiar, you're aggravating, yet you're easy to forgive..”(Bradbury 23) Through all Clarisse's questioning, Montag knows that she is trying to help him. Because of her help and impact on him, Montag is changed forever.