Examples Of Identity In Fahrenheit 451

Every day a person’s identity is changed and shaped from the community they live in, to the people they meet and interact with. The changes are so slight and subtle, but when an individual takes a step back and looks at who they have become it’s a whole different person. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury explores the idea that the people an individual meets throughout life, connections that are formed, and the society they live in, shape different parts of their identity.

The way society is and the people Mildred associates with has shaped parts of her identity. Throughout the entire book Mildred says few words and has few actions; however, the actions and words she speaks are heavily influenced by those around her. After Guy Montag watched

A different example of how society and people change an individual is how the professors Montag meets adapt to deal with the rules of burning books. After Montag had burned Beatty and gone to Faber’s house to warn him, he went to the woods and started running toward a river and train tracks. When he arrived at the train tracks Montag stumbled across a group of men gathered around a fire. He found out that they used to be professors at colleges before books were illegal. When they all started talking, Montag found out that they keep books in their head, not on paper, “We’re book burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found. Microfilming didn’t pay off; we were always traveling, we didn’t want to bury the film and come back later. Always the chance of discovery. Better to keep it in the old heads, where no one can see it or suspect it!” (152). The professors were influenced in a different way by society. Instead of following what everyone else is doing and complying to burning books and ever reading them again, they made the decision to read the books and then burn them. By reading the books and burning them, the professors are able to keep the stories and authors alive even when their books aren’t. The professors are able to pass the stories on to others and they are able to learn from them. Society pushed them to memorize the books,

Guy Montag is a fireman and has been for ten years. Each day he burns books to ashes and then burns the ashes. He burns the books because they are illegal, but he doesn’t know why they are illegal. He doesn’t question what he doesn’t or why he does it. He just follows orders, “They pumped the cold fluid from the numeraled 451 tanks strapped to their shoulders. They coated each book, the pumped rooms full of it,” (38). Montag doesn’t think about what he does for his job, he does what he is told to do. The society says books are bad and so Montag grabs a tank and coats each book before setting them on fire. The society has brainwashed people into not questioning things, Montag burned a woman because she wouldn’t leave her books to burn. It wasn’t until after the death of that woman that he began to question the way things are. The reader can see how people are also influential to how Montag is shaped. Throughout the book a man is mentioned that Montag met in a park. Eventually, Montag went to his house to get advice on the books he has. The man, Faber, gave Montag a two way radio that allowed the two to talk to each other and listen to what is going on around them. After the alarm was called in on Montag’s house, Montag didn’t know how to react. He was upset that Mildred, his wife, betrayed him and didn’t talk to him. Captain Beatty saw the radio in Montag’s ear and then fall