Fahrenheit 451 Essay, Research Paper
Guy Montag is a fireman in charge of burning books. A gentle young
girl named Clarisse McClellan opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with
her innocently penetrating questions and peculiar love of people and nature.
After his wife Mildred attempts suicide without even realizing what she is
doing, after he witnesses an old woman let herself be burned with her books,
and after he hears that Clarisse has been killed by a speeding car, Montag
searches for solutions to his rising dissatisfaction in a stash of books he has
stolen and hidden. He looks to Mildred for help and support, but she prefers
television to her husband’s company and cannot understand why he would
want to take the terrible risk of reading books.
Montag remembers an old intellectual named Faber with whom he
once talked in the park and goes to him for help in understanding what he
reads. Meanwhile, Beatty, Montag’s superior, has guessed that Montag is
experimenting with books and hints that he should turn in the book he stole
from the old woman’s library within 24 hours. Faber explains the value of
books to Montag, which lies in their ability to store and communicate
meaningful information, something which their society now lacks. He agrees to
help Montag and gives him a two-way radio which fits into his ear so that he
can hear what Montag hears and talk to him secretly. Montag goes home and
finds two of his wife’s friends there. Their superficiality angers him, and he
shows them a book of poetry and reads them one of the poems. Mildred tries
to explain this away as standard fireman procedure for proving to people how
useless books are, but the women leave quite disturbed and upset.
Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to
Beatty. Beatty browbeats him with his impressive knowledge of literature and
historical quotations, which he uses to support his argument that books are
dangerous and must be destroyed. An alarm comes through, and they rush off
to Montag’s own house. Mildred rushes out, and Montag realizes it was she
who put in the alarm. Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself, and
when he is done, he places him under arrest. Beatty continues to berate
Montag, who turns the flamethrower on his superior and proceeds to burn
him to ashes. Montag knocks the other firemen unconscious and begins to
run, when the Mechanical Hound, a monstrous machine which Beatty has set
to attack Montag, appears and pounces. Montag manages to destroy it with
his flamethrower, but not before it injects his leg with a large dose of
anesthetic. Montag walks off the numbness in his leg and escapes with some
books that were hidden in the backyard. He hides these in one of the other
firemen’s houses and calls in an alarm from a payphone.
He goes to Faber’s house, where he learns that a new Hound has been
put on his trail. Faber tells Montag he is leaving for St. Louis to see a retired
printer who may be able to help them, and Montag gives him some money
and tells him how to remove his scent from the house so the Hound will not
enter it. He takes some of Faber’s old clothes and runs off toward the river.
The whole city watches as the chase unfolds on TV, but Montag manages to
escape in the river and change into Faber’s clothes to disguise his scent. He
drifts downstream into the country and follows a set of abandoned railroad
tracks until he finds a group of renegade intellectuals led by a man named
Granger who welcome him. They are a part of a nationwide network of
book-lovers who have memorized many great works of literature and
philosophy. They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the
aftermath of the war that has just been declared. Enemy jets appear in the sky
and drop their bombs on the city, which is instantly vaporized. Montag and
the others turn and head up the river to see if they can help the survivors, and
Montag knows he will soon follow the other refugees out into the countryside,
where there will always be plenty to keep him fulfilled.