The Girl With Scars, Secrets And Sorrow

In a world where it is normal to burn books, Montag, not your usual fire fighter must go against the odds of his society and fight for what he wants. In the book Fahrenheit 451, the author, Ray Bradbury uses biblical references and allusions to compare Montag's life and struggles to a Christ-like figure and how they both fought for their values and beliefs.

“It was a pleasure to burn. It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed.” It’s thousands of years later, and there’s not a single book in sight. If you hide a book, you’ll be arrested, and your books will be burned. Guy Montag is a fireman, and his job to burn the books. However, he begins to question the system, after working this job for years.

A dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 depicts people trying to save an unworthy world. In a futuristic America, where books are forbidden, lawbreakers are killed. Guy Montag, a firefighter who burns books to keep people innocent, starts to question the collectivist society after burning down a house along with an old woman in it. The woman, the story's Christ figure, sacrifices herself to save Montag from the silent woods of their unworthy society.

A Family of Flames Michelle K. once explained, “some women are lost in the fire; some women are built from it”. In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, she tells her long, adventurous story about growing up in a poor family who lived on the road for a majority of her childhood. Fire seems to be the only constant thing in her life, destroying but also building Jeannette as it grows. After Jeannette learns to control the fire that consumes her life, she obtains her own flame.

Although he never learned her name, her devotion to her books, saying “I want to stay here” to burn with her books, made him feel completely unsatisfied with his life. (36) It made him sick, wondering why she did that. He didn’t want to go back to the fire station anymore. He couldn’t get the event out of his head, “We burned a thousand books. We burned a woman.”

In a not so distant future, where fireman burn down buildings with books inside of them, instead of putting them out, Ray Bradbury shows the inevitability of self destruction. Montag is a fireman, who has been questioning the ethicality of their work by secretly collecting illegal books for months. Eventually his wife, Mildred pulls the alarm and his boss, Beatty, forces him to burn his own house down. Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, shows how the rebirth of either an individual or society requires self destruction through the motif of fire, which symbolizes destruction, and Montag’s burning of his own house.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 portrays a group of men called “firemen.” Their title, however, is ironic because of what fireman usually do. Instead of putting out fires, the men in this novel deliberately set books and suspected criminal homes ablaze. Montag, the novel’s protagonist, finds “pleasure” (Bradbury 1) in his job at the beginning of the book. Further into the story, he realizes that burning books and homes destroys knowledge and is fatal to others. Montag now recognizes that depriving a generation of history, religion, and morals have desensitized his people to the point that original thoughts are nonexistent. Furthermore, cares and concerns for others have vanished, and having fun reigns supreme in society.

“’Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames’” (Bradbury 6). In the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Guy Montag is a fireman, someone that burns books for the government to keep a firm control on what knowledge society has. However, through a series of events populated by an attempted suicide, a young girl, and an old man, Montag is shown a life where books are treasured instead of feared and hated. Armed with a vision of what the world has been, and could be like again, Montag ultimately meets up in the aftermath of a war with others that share his vision, and they begin their mission to make fire something other than a source of fear: a healing power.

Captain Beatty then comes to Montag’s house in order to get rid of these doubts. He explains that firemen “were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors” (Bradbury 56). Beatty explains the job description of a fireman changed because they are supposed to preserve the happiness of the people. They burn books because the ideas that books represent can offend people and make a person feel as if another is superior to them. By comparing the firemen to executors, the firemen are killing the ideas and people that a book represents just as an executor kills a person. Another example of how today’s society is starting to resemble the society portrayed in Fahrenheit 451 is when Yale professor, Erika Christakis, was criticized for sending an email asking students not to change themselves on a whim that they might offend someone . She explains that “many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense” (Christakis, 1). However, she wonders “if we should reflect more transparently, as a

In Ray Bradbury’s novel, “Fahrenheit 451”, he creates a futuristic society impacted by censorship, where citizens are forced to conform to the government’s manipulation. In this society, all forms of literature became a dangerous gateway to knowledge and are regarded as signs of controversy. Books have been outlawed, and thus the human mind, individuality and thought have all become a blurred existence. Society has become senseless. Merely a place where a fireman’s profession is burning books and any houses found with books kept inside. The novel’s protagonist, Montage, also a fireman, is the narrator of the given quote above. Through the repetitive word “burning”, Bradbury emphasizes Montage’s sense of revelation. Montage realizes he must

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, early humans first discovered fire. It was feared and unknown, but its power was eventually harnessed and utilised. This change of perspective drastically expedited the evolution of human culture. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, the story’s protagonist, learns just how impactful it can be to alter one’s viewpoint. He lives in a society where reading and intellect is frowned upon and his job is to burn books. Eventually, Montag begins to drift away from these societal ideals and to embark on a journey of self-discovery. As displayed through word choice and figurative language, Montag’s ever-changing view of fire throughout Fahrenheit 451 echoes his character development from an egotistical, self-serving man to one who recognizes his greater purpose in the world, despite a period of reversal in progress.

According to German author, Heinrich Heine, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” This quote relates to the book burning and the consequences in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. In Fahrenheit 451, the government bans all printed materials, and the firefighters are responsible to enforce the book-banning law. The firefighters’ job in this dystopian, emotionless, egalitarian society is to burn the houses that contain books. This society depends heavily on technology, where “The Family” is an interactive television wall. Guy Montag is a well-respected senior fireman; however, he starts to question the government after meeting the radical Clarisse. He starts to read confiscated books and decides

“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings” is a famous quote said by Heinrich Heine, which relates to the concept of book burning, seen in the novel Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury uses his unique literary style to write the novel Fahrenheit 451; where he brings his readers to a future American Society which consists of censorship, book burning, and completely oblivious families. The novel’s protagonist, Guy Montag, is one of the many firemen who takes pride in starting fires rather than putting them out, until he encounters a seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan. As the novel progresses, the reader is able to notice what Clarisse’s values are in the novel, how her innocence and

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.

The film version of Diary of a Teenage Girl, rather than condemning patriarchal privilege and its attendant exploitations as the book does, is instead a very careful take on a young 's girl 's exploration of her sexuality. The film and the book share the same premise but ultimately differ on delivery due to their inherently different approaches to capturing Minnie’s life as her and the other characters are portrayed differently, so much so that is a cautious take on an otherwise un-barred novel. Rather than touching upon patriarchal privilege and its exploitations, the film smooths over many of the more intense aspects in order to create a happy ending for itself, which is fundamentally different than what the book intended.