Danny Mele 9/25/07

Mr. Eaton English 10 H

Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451, was written in the 50’s. It is about a futuristic society in which books are burned. In this society, intellectuals are shunned and the value of life is often ignored. The main character, Guy Montag, is a “fireman”. He sets fires rather than putting them out. If anyone is suspected of owning a book or several books, the books along with the house is immediately burned and forgotten. That is how the society works. Dead bodies are burned immediately and forgotten, not mourned. The ideas of faith and love are no longer realistic. Montag is lying to himself about his entire life in the beginning of the book. He pretends to love is job and his wife, but begins to realize how unhappy he is. One night when he is walking home he meets a 17 year old girl named Clarisse. Clarisse starts to talk like a normal human, like she understands and appreciates things. Montag realizes this once the conversation is ended with her asking him (Bradbury)“Are you happy?”(10). He replies saying “Am I what?” and as he walks away saying to himself “Happy! Of all the nonsense.” That night he returns home to see his wife in her bed with sleeping pills laying beside her. He notices her sleeping pill issue and his unhappiness. He is later questioned by Clarisse if he is in love. He replies falsely again by saying “I am, very much in love!”(22). Throughout the novel there are hints of Montag stealing and hiding books in his own home. “Montag’s hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion, with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest. The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.

Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of it’s own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief. Now it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician’s flourish! Look here! Innocent! Look!” (37-38) This shows how at first he could not admit to himself that he was stealing books because he didn’t know why. But with all of these examples it is clear that he was always one of the few left in this society who still cared and wanted to preserve what is right.

Clarisse was clearly the turning point for Montag’s point of view on his futuristic life. She opened his eyes to the corrupt community. After several days he finally began to see how important she was and really started to appreciate knowing her. Montag tries to explain Clarisse to his wife, Mildred.

“ ‘Mildred, do you know that girl I was telling you about?’ ‘What girl?’ She was almost asleep. ‘The girl next door.’ ‘What girl next door?’ ‘You know, the high-school girl. Clarisse, her name is.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ said his wife. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few days--four days to be exact. Have you seen her?’ ‘No.’ ‘I’ve meant to talk to you about her. Strange.’ ‘Oh, I know the one you mean.’ ‘I thought you would.’ ‘Her,’ said Mildred in the dark room. ‘What about her?’ asked Montag. ‘I meant to tell you. Forgot. Forgot.’ ‘Tell me now. What is it?’ ‘I think she’s gone.’ ‘Gone?’ ‘Whole family moved out somewhere. But she’s gone for good. I think she’s dead.’”.(47) This shows how careless many in this society can act. Mildred forgot for four days to tell her husband that this girl he knew got run over by a car. This community can murder and kill and not think twice about it. Montag has an unusual reaction to Mildred’s news. He is upset that she hadn’t told him sooner. This is different because this society does not mourn at all or care for the dead.

One of the last and most important metaphors given in the novel is the mentioning of the phoenix. Montag is running from the police because he has been hiding books when he meets a group of homeless intellectuals. The leader of these men, Granger, starts describing this bird as he looks to the city while it is being fire-bombed. “Granger looked into the fire. ‘Phoenix.’ ‘What?’ ‘There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been the first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes. He got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn silly thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly things we just did. We know all the same damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years…’”. (163) This is a metaphor of how man keeps making the same mistakes but we can prevent them because we have memory of the past. With genocide and other horrible details of the human culture repeating the world must be insane to not learn from their mistakes. These intellectuals know to learn from their mistakes and realize what is wrong in their society. They were the only ones who knew what was right from wrong. Granger’s final metaphor is spoken as they depart for the city. He describes how they can rebuild the city, and the first thing they should do is make a factory of mirrors. Mirrors reflect someone’s own image and the world around them. If they stare into them for awhile, they can get a perfect sense of themselves, so they can get a grip on reality.

The book finally ends with Montag remembering part of the book of Ecclesiastes from the bible. He decides to save the memory of this passage for when they reach the city.