Theme and Plot Development of Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451
Theme and Plot Development of Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451
Written By Ray Bradbury "Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years and he had never questioned the joy of the midnight runs, or the joy of watching pages consumed by flames. Never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think. Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do. Guy Montag was not the same person at both the beginning and end of Fahrenheit 451. The answer to this question is a definite no. Montag transformed dramatically throughout the story. Guy Montag is a fireman in charge of burning books in a grim, futuristic United States. The book opens with a brief description of the pleasure he experiences while on the job one evening. He wears a helmet emblazoned with the numeral 451 (the temperature at which paper burns), a black uniform with a salamander on the arm, and a "phoenix disc" on his chest. On his way home from the fire station, he feels a sense of nervous anticipation. After suspecting a lingering nearby presence, he meets his new neighbor, an inquisitive and unusual seventeen-year-old named Clarisse McClellan. She immediately recognizes him as a fireman and seems fascinated by him and his uniform. She explains that she is "crazy" and proceeds to suggest that the original duty of firemen was to extinguish fires rather than to light them. She asks him about his job and tells him that she comes from a strange family that does such peculiar things as talk to each other and walk places being a pedestrian, like reading, is against the law.
Clarisse's strangeness makes Guy nervous, and he laughs repeatedly and involuntarily. She reminds him in different ways of candlelight, a clock, and a mirror. He cannot help feeling somehow attracted to her: she fascinates him with her outrageous questions, unorthodox lifestyle, perceptive observations, and "incredible power of identification." She asks him if he is happy and then disappears into her house. Pondering the absurd question, he enters his house and muses about this enigmatic stranger and her comprehension of his "innermost trembling thought.” Montag is disturbed by his meeting with Clarisse because he is not used to talking with people about personal...