Montag’s Internal and External Conflicts People sometimes have a great effect on other people, even if they do not realize it. That is what happens to Guy Montag, a main character in Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. In the novel he comes across many characters that change him. In the novel Ray Bradbury uses conflict to show the knowledge and ignorance in the characters. Ray Bradbury uses Montag’s internal and external conflict throughout the book to show how he is changed by these things.
In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury associates protagonist Montag Guy’s inner conflicts with the conflict of war. The correlation between Montag's internal conflicts with the external conflict of war exaggerates how Clarisse, Mildred, and Beatty are central to propelling his inner war forward. Throughout the novel, each character influences and builds Montag’s internal war. In addition, all the confrontations between Montag and these characters correlate with events leading up to the external war.
When Montag reveals his hidden books to Mildred, she does not take time to understand them. “‘It doesn’t mean anything!’” (Bradbury 65). She, instead, worries about how it might affect her image if they are found out. “He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face paled out and her eyes were fastened wide” (Bradbury 63).
In this part of the book, all of the firemen including Montag received a call to burn a house with the books in there. Here became the turning point for Montag as he saw the woman, who already had made her decision to die rather than live in a world of oppression and restricted freedom of thought which books symbolize in this part, burns with the illegal books in the burning house, refusing to go out without the assurance of the safety of the books. We can suppose that his perception is gradually changing through the phrase showing that Montag felt a huge guilt over this, unlike the other firemen or Beatty. Furthermore, during the conversation with his wife, Mildred, Montag says, “We burn a thousand books. We burnt a woman.
In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Montag, the protagonist and book burner, battles between the light and dark sides of society, first with Beatty, his boss, and the government and then with Clarisse, a neighbor girl and Faber, an English professor. Montag is stuck in the dark burning books and is ignorant to the world around him. He moves towards greater awareness when he meets Clarisse and is awakened to the wonders of deep thought and books. Finally, he risks his life by trying to save the books.
Being obsessed with technology can destroy a society, and people’s relationships in it. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 to keep the future from turning into the dystopian world in the book. The characters in the novel are attached to technology more than their own families. Everyone is caught up in television, and they do not stop to see what is going on around them. The firemen burn books and houses instead of putting out fires. Montag finally starts to notice how messed up his society is when he has conflicts with different people. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury he uses both internal and external conflicts to hint to the audience that life is more consequential than worrying about the technology.
The government does not want people to be unhappy and worried so they burn all of the books. Montag burns the books and houses with books in them. Houses are fireproof but the inside memories are all destroyed. He does this to make others happy but Montag himself is not happy. Through Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 Montag and his wife Mildred symbolize different
Mildred says, “Look who’s here. Captain Beatty,” (Bradbury 52). Montag realized what Beatty was doing and what role he played in his little plan to turn Montag and Montag did not want anything to do with Beatty and the firehouse and rebelled against it. Beatty, finally towards the end of the book, pushed montag over the edge. Montag burned Beatty and killed him making him a criminal and having to go into hiding.
As it says in the front of Fahrenheit 451 before it even begins, “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way,” Montag does not care about breaking the rules anymore (1). As Beatty told Montag, when nobody read books anymore because of technology, they eventually started getting rid of books all together. The government wanted everyone to be equal, and they did not want anyone being smarter than anyone else by reading books. Montag decides he wants to get out the books he has been hiding in his ventilator grille. Montag begins to learn: “I applied mine heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom, and the reason of things, and to know the wickedness of folly, even of foolishness and madness” (King James Bible, Ecc. 7.25).
Ray Bradbury 's novel Fahrenheit 451 delineates a society where books and quality information are censored while useless media is consumed daily by the citizens. Through the use of the character Mildred as a foil to contrast the distinct coming of age journey of the protagonist Guy Montag, Bradbury highlights the dangers of ignorance in a totalitarian society as well as the importance of critical thinking. From the beginning of the story, the author automatically epitomizes Mildred as a direct embodiment of the rest of the society: she overdoses, consumes a vast amount of mindless television, and is oblivious to the despotic and manipulative government. Bradbury utilizes Mildred as a symbol of ignorance to emphasize how a population will be devoid of the ability to think critically while living in a totalitarian society. Before Montag meets Clarisse, he is
Fahrenheit 451 had many different pairs of characters that had many different thoughts about certain things in life. Mildred, Montag 's wife, was very negative and only cared about herself, but Clarisse cared about other people than herself and had a positive view on the outside world. Beatty thinks that books will cause the world to end, but Montag thinks that they won 't and can help teach the world many different things. Faber and the Lost Gang both wanted to make people think that books are good again, but had two different ways of doing that.. In the book, Fahrenheit 451, there were three pairs of characters who were very different from each other and represented something or somebody in a society.
Montag’s wife Mildred is an example of someone who conforms to society and can not imagine a lifestyle outside the one she has. In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Mildred says to Montag “books aren’t people. You, read and I looked all around, but there isn’t anybody! Now, my family is people.
Beatty, the firehouse captain, had been suspicious of Montag being in possession of literature. His dubious thoughts are found to be correct when Mildred turned Montag in. Montag is forced to go on the run, leaving the city for the countryside, where he finds other outcasted intellectuals. The city is bombed, leaving it completely destroyed and the society in ruins. The society Ray Bradbury creates in Fahrenheit 451 showcases how censorship is a threat to free thinking, society’s humanity, and human relationships through the use of imagery, symbolism and motifs.
The film failed to include the main cause of Montag’s marriage failing and life being bland. Although the film failed to include important details from the book, it still told the story of Fahrenheit 451. After examining how the film introduced new ideas, eliminated characters, and changed important scenes from the book, it is clear that a film can tell the same story of a book with different work. The book’s several messages, such knowledge being indestructible, was received in the film. Overall, the film and book shared the outcome of a dystopian society allowing propaganda and censorship to not only take over the world, but their thinking
Matthew Nodder ENG 3UC Mr. Hokstad May 2, 2017 Essay Rough Copy Fahrenheit 451 takes place in a dystopian society where knowledge and critical thinking is considered to be different. The novel revolves around the main character, Guy Montag, referred to as Montag throughout the novel. Montag is a firemen, which means that in his society he starts fires rather than puting them out. A ban was put on books by society the people because they were seen to create a form of inequality, and contained controversial content. This was replaced by modernized technologies such as wall televisions.