As we all know, everyone is different in their own way. Throughout the novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Montag faced many situations and one of them was being caught with books and having his house burnt down by Captain Beatty. A handful of justifications on why it was right for Beatty to burn Montag’s house down is because the Mechanical hound knew that Montag had books in his house, Beatty was doing his job and Millie also knew he had books and didn’t want to get in trouble as well. Even though Montag was a fireman and knew what would happen if he was caught with books, he still hid the books anyway and tried to get away with it. In the beginning, the hound caused everyone to sense that it was precisely watching Montag do all of the actions he did.
Montag is a fireman with a wife. His wife, Mildred, watches television all day, while Montag has to make a living to support the two. One evening, Montag trudges home from work and has an odd conversation with a queen teenage girl named Clarisse. Soon, evening after evening, Montag keeps having conversations with Clarisse. Through these conversations, lies the government has replaced as truth are exposed within his mind.
Analyzing these elements of Montag’s character reveals a theme that life should be questioned and the unobserved life is not worth living. The physiology of Guy Montag shows that he fulfills the stereotypes of the “American Dream” but is not satisfied by them.
In the book Fahrenheit 451 Guy Montag a fireman that burns books goes through some rough times trying to find happiness in his life. He gets awaken to this idea when he meets a jaunty yet skittish girl named Clarisse, who asks him a question and makes him question his happiness and love. Then again through all of this thinking, he starts to find himself getting curious and starts to take books from houses that need to be burned for having them. Although Montag can be seen as a murder he is justified in killing Beatty, the fireman chief, because Montag is curious and tired of kids not knowing what really happened throughout history, as well as how Beatty treats him throughout the book. In the end, Montag killing Beatty was a helpful act of society itself.
(SIP-A) Montag started to turn against his society. (STEWE-1) His first target was Beatty, who tried to make him turn against books. “And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam” (Bradbury 115). Montag had shot a pulse of liquid fire onto Beatty and then watched him burn alive.
Montag is a dynamic character. He is a fireman who burn books. He is 30 years old and has worked as a fireman for 20 years. In the beginning, he had a strong and strict personality but then he met girl name Clarisse, who introduces him to the past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the parlor walls. Montag begins to question everything he has ever known (Bradbury).
It also causes him to recall a memory of his mother. 4. The implication of the memory and the wish is that Montag and his mother were not very close. There was a power failure, and Montag and his mother were sitting together by the light of a candle and Montag felt close to his mother.
He goes to Faber, a retired English professor, who conspires with Montag to take down Beatty and the fire station with all its men. Moreover, he helps him escape the hound and guides him to a group of people who live down the river. Montag discovers that he is not alone; all these people know the importance of books and they memorize them. Henriette Wien explains, “Montag’s resistance, therefore, should be read as paths to the ultimate emotional and spiritual re-connection” (Wien 69). Eventually, after the city’s destruction by bombs, Montag and his intellectual friends decide to start a new life seeking the free future they desire.
That was until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who showed him how to be different and helped him open his mind to greater things in life. Montag is a normal fireman living in this society until he changes his mentality because of major events in the story, his personal experiences, and several influential characters. In the beginning of the story Montag is completely at peace with his life, his job, lifestyle and his identity. “It was the pleasure of seeing things eaten, to see things blackened and changed”(1pg. ).
Initially, Montag’s phony propensities to burning books stimulated by society conceals his humanity from himself within this seemingly ideal civilization. Over the span of the book, Montag is considerably impersonal as he relishes his brutal and destructive work and diverts himself by watching the suffering he inflicts, displaying that he is satisfied with his illusional lifestyle and his occupation as a fireman. Amid his walk home Montag ponders, “ it was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (1). As appeared in the statement, Montag’s attachment to burning books hinders his internal clash in his mission for truth and a sense of identity through pursuing, creating two sides in him: one with a yearning for burning books and another for discovering truth and knowledge within them. However, his unquenchable craving for burning books enhances, as a result of being a mere pawn of his illogical, persuasional government, eliminating his inquisitiveness for a sense of identity through their brainwashing, creating a fraudulent state of happiness.