Text Analysis- Fahrenheit 451

In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is a fireman, whose job is to set things on fire instead of extinguishing them. He lives in a very messed up world where no one cares about books, and they are actually frowned upon. Hated. Shunned. Montag loves his job of burning books, and believes that he is happy with his life. This changes when a teenage girl proves him wrong, which shows you how much different they are in terms of brainwashing.

Montag has never questioned his happiness, until he meets a seventeen year old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who is anything but ordinary. She asks Montag why books are illegal and hated. If firemen used to put fires out instead of starting them. If he had ever read any of the books he's burned. With her natural curiosity, Clarisse is clearly not brainwashed, unlike most of the other characters in the book. Montag is annoyed by her inquisitiveness, but is still greatly influenced.

After his conversation with Clarisse, Montag now questions what he really wants. He becomes interested in books, and tries to keep them secret. But books are to be burned, not read (hence the title of the book: Fahrenheit 451, which is the temperature that books burn at). If books are found in anyone's house, the house has to be burned down. Captain Beatty, Montag's boss, hints in his own creepy way that he may have once read books himself by trying to get Montag to stop.

Montag's wife, Mildred, appears to be completely brainwashed and doesn't even pay attention to Montag's new interest at first. She sits in front of a tv all day and watches a show that completely has her thinking that the characters are real. She takes sleeping pills every night and has become addicted to them. She finds pleasure in driving at reckless speeds, which is actually not an uncommon thing in this world. Although, if you think about it, Mildred might not be completely brainwashed. After her so-called "accident" with the sleeping pills, she acts differently around Montag and avoids his questions. She might have been so sick of living in this Dystopian world as to actually have attempted suicide by drug overdose.

There is one other man that Montag meets, who isn't ignorant of his surroundings: Faber. He was a retired English Professor, and from his quote "I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive," you can tell that he really is aware of life and its significance. He even likes books and poetry, just like Montag. Faber was a coward, though, and wanted nothing to do with Montag at first, but eventually warmed up.

Something unexpected happens near the end of the book: Mildred turns Montag in to the firemen for owning books, betraying him. Captain Beatty arrives and orders Montag to burn down his house, so he does. Next, he burns Beatty. "And there 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." Montag has gone crazy, for his love of books and hatred for Beatty.