Many of Stephen King’s stories involve characters with powers and governments that withhold secrets from the public; Firestarter is a prime example of this sub genre. King wrote Firestarter in 1980, during a period of social change regarding women’s equality and the beginning of third-wave feminism. King’s use of setting, characters, and imagery connect the plot to the themes surrounding concerns of that time.
The story in this book focuses on Andy McGee and his daughter Charlie, and the the secret government agency trying to track them down. “The Shop” as they call it performed experiments on many students that eventually caused slight psychological powers such as telekinesis in those that took a drug called Lot 6. Both Andy and his eventual wife participated in this experiment and developed powers that had multiple limitations. However, when they had Charlie, both The Shop and her parents saw that she had a pyrokinetic ability with no distinguishable side effects. This lead to The Shop killing her mother and kidnapping her in an attempt to use her as a weapon of mass destruction. A chase around the country ensues after Andy manages to get her back for a few months. This is until a special Shop agent captures the pair and moves them into a secret facility.
Firestarter takes place in several different locations since the characters have to flee often during the course of events in the book. These locations include suspicious airports, dirty motels, old farmhouses, and
Of all literary works regarding dystopian societies, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is perhaps one of the most bluntly shocking, insightful, and relatable of them. Set in a United States of the future, this novel contains a government that has banned books and a society that constantly watches television. However, Guy Montag, a fireman (one who burns books as opposed to actually putting out fires) discovers books and a spark of desire for knowledge is ignited within him. Unfortunately his boss, the belligerent Captain Beatty, catches on to his newfound thirst for literature. A man of great duplicity, Beatty sets up Montag to ultimately have his home destroyed and to be expulsed from the city. On the other hand, Beatty is a much rounder
Guy Montag, a local ‘firemen’ lives in a despairing dreary world where instead of firemen extinguishing fires they create them, they burn and banish books. They believe that books are a sin and trouble to society. Although Montag is one of the main sources of the books being burned he meets a bright young girl that changes his ways of thinking and
Former President of South Africa and philanthropist Nelson Mandela once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, firemen don’t put out fires; they start them. This novel is about a fireman named Montag who realizes setting houses and books on fire is not only wrong, but it’s the total opposite of what the firemen should be doing. A certain encounter with a character starts a chain reaction in Montag to change the way things are around his city. Through trials and tribulations, Montag finds a group of people who will help him give the people back their knowledge. The prominent themes in this book, along with rhetorical devices, are helpful to connect the characters' lives to the reader’s. This being said, the content of Fahrenheit 451 is why the novel is so popular.
Guy Montag is a firefighter and a firefighter in his society burns books because it is a
In Fahrenheit 451 the role of a fireman is opposite of what it is today. In today's time firemen are here to help in emergencies. They are supposed to put out fires. In Fahrenheit 451 everything is fireproof so they aren’t necessarily needed anymore. Books are banned because
Knowledge is the driving force behind any society. Without knowledge, a society is bound to become corrupt and nonfunctioning. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of a firefighter named Montag. In this futuristic and utopian society, firefighters do not put out fires, they start them. The job of a firefighter is to find and burn books, which have been banned by the government. Montag goes along with the firefighter lifestyle until he meets a young girl named Clarisse. She causes him to start wondering about books, and Montag decides to grab one from a woman's house before it is burned down. Montag reads it and realizes how important books are to humanity. He knows that what firefighters are doing is wrong, and sets out to change it. Bradbury uses this story to portray a corrupt society that he believes will come of the real world, and some of his ideas have already come true.
Guy Montag is the protagonist and central character of the book, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury that transforms from a conformist in a totalitarian society to rebuilding a society that reads books. Montag fits the cliché description of a good-looking male with “black hair, black brows…fiery face, and…blue-steel shaved but unshaved look.” (Bradbury, 33) For the past eight years he has burned books. He is a 3rd generation firefighter, who in the beginning of the story, loves his job, which consists of burning the homes of people who perform criminal acts of reading and keeping books in their homes. By understanding Montag’s relationships, discontentment, and future, one can begin to understand the complexities of Guy Montag.
Guy montag, a future fireman who sets fires, and enjoys it. This society cant read books, it's illegal, all books are burned seemingly to everyone’s enjoyment, including guy. Largely defining his character as finding a fire-fueled smile that never leaves his face. Clarisse, a girl living next to guy, changes his mind with simple questions he’s never heard, “are you in love?’’ No one asks him a personal question, he doesn't know the answer. With books being burned for their knowledge, authenticity is scarce and people are feed what they “need” to hear, substance-less information no one cares to change or question because they don't know how, just hop in the truck and hit 90 mph for an hour if something bothers
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 features a fictional and futuristic firefighter named Guy Montag. As a firefighter, Montag does not put out fires. Instead, he starts them in order to burn books and, basically, knowledge to the human race. He does not have any second thoughts about his responsibility until he meets seventeen-year-old Clarisse McClellan. She reveals many wonders of the world to Montag and causes him to rethink what he is doing in burning books. After his talks with her, the society’s obedience to the law that bans knowledge, thinking, and creativity also increasingly distresses him. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows conformity in the futuristic America through schooling, leisure, and fright.
Ray Bradbury, perhaps one of the best-known science fiction, wrote the amazing novel Fahrenheit 451. The novel is about Guy Montag, a ‘fireman’ who produces fires instead of eliminating them in order to burn books (Watt 2). One night while he is walking home from work he meets a young girl who stirs up his thoughts and curiosities like no one has before. She tells him of a world where fireman put out fires instead of starting them and where people read books and think for themselves (Allen 1).
In this story censorship, plays a big role and is one of the key important themes portrayed throughout the novel. Politicians today have done similar things to attempt to censor citizens from situations in foreign countries just like the firemen from Fahrenheit 451. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, the firemen burn the books to shield their people from knowledge of the past. They want to keep their society pure and away from anything that will make them to not obey their protocols. The examples of censorship in the book would be banning of literature, burning offensive novels and sometimes burning the owners of the books with them. In Fahrenheit 451, censorship has an immense effect on the dystopian society’s characteristics and intelligence.
The use of censorship to examine and eliminate elements in media that are found to be unorthodox or radical has been prevalent in society for centuries. Through censorship, ideas found to be objectionable or offensive are repressed. In his prophetic novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury denotes the common practice of government censorship of books as a suppressive and marginalizing concept for humans because it strips them of the realities, truths, and meaning behind books and deprives them the freedom to deliberate and act on them. The protagonist, Guy Montag lives in a futuristic, American society and is a ‘firemen’; a group of men that deflect the old conventional purpose of stopping fires, to creating
As the plot presented itself, fire did also. Fire was used as a solution to get rid of society’s ills. Ills in this society include nonconformity, overflow in wisdom and knowledge, and government doubt or mistrust. They all derived from one common factor: books. Beatty claimed that without books “…all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door” (28). Books were the greatest evil, because it places ideas of controversy and critical thinking into the minds of readers. Explaining to Montag the quick fix to the trouble of books, Beatty said, “And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind…” (28). As these issues became more and more prominent with time, something to subdue or suppress them was needed. Fire was the answer. So, in their noble position as firemen, Montag and his coworkers destroyed any detected books with fire immediately. This way, residents cannot read them and implant radical ideas. The
In the future, the job of firemen morphs from putting fires out to burning books. The story Fahrenheit 451 revolves around this issue of book burning, but there is a deeper meaning to the book. Bradbury is warning that the monopolizing effect of social media will transform generations to come into a society with no genuine connections, no distinctive thoughts, and excessive reliance on technology. This book was written in 1951, and today, the propositions are no longer fiction, but are becoming a reality.
In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen burned a woman and her library in order to suppress information contained within her books to protect the system in which the government deceives the people.