Commentary on Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Fahrenheit 451- Essay

Fahrenheit 451 was indeed a very interesting but also great book to read. The beginning of the book had me very confused for a while, so I had to read it over. Each time I read it over I got a different interpretation of what the author was trying to say. I then began to realize that its a story about the future. The firefighters didnt put out fires; they burn books to erase the past. They wanted to erase the past because the past made people forlorn. They burned the books to accommodate everyones feelings about things they didnt like.

The main character of the book is a thirty-year-old fireman named Guy Montag. Fahrenheit presents the firemen as the tools of censorship and illegal books. Since books rarely exist in their society they look not to things of intellectual worth, but to things with physical and non-thinking pleasure. 451 Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. As a fireman living in a futuristic city, it is Guy Montag's job to see that that is exactly what happens. Anyone who was caught with books hidden in their home was forced out of it while the he forced his way in. Then, he turned the house into an inferno. Montag carries out his job with pride, until one day he met a young girl who changed his mind about everything.

In the beginning of the book he met a young girl, who was only seventeen years old, named Clarisse McClellan. She was his new next-door neighbor. One night when he got home she was near by as though she was waiting for him. They began talking and almost immediately made a bond. Clarisse was saying and asking some very weird things that made Montag wonder why she was saying and asking those things. At first I thought he was coming on to her, from the way he was describing her and saying how beautiful she was. Their night ended very awkwardly when Clarisse simple asked Montag was he happy and then went into her house.

When he got into his house, he contemplated on her words for a while. He went in the room with his wife who appeared to be sleeping. He soon realized that she had overdosed on a bottle full of pills and got her some help quickly. The next day his wife, Mildred, didnt remember anything that happened. Montag got so tired of trying to explain what happened he just went on with a lie that Mildred thought was the truth. Their relationship wasnt as good as it may have seemed. They were very distant for two people who were supposed to be married. Montag was trying to embrace the unknown and figure out why things were the way they were. Mildred on the other hand enjoyed being "happy". Montag began to realize that he didnt love his wife anymore. He felt like she turned to the media for help and opinions, and he was totally against that. So after a while, he and his wife separated.