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Who Is Montag A Hero In Fahrenheit 451

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There are 129, 864, 880 books in the world. Now imagine if there were zero. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this is precisely the goal of firemen and the majority of society. Guy Montag has been a fireman for ten years, and he has always gotten a certain thrill from starting fires to burn houses containing books to the ground. Then Clarisse McClellan comes along and changes his perspective on everything. She says that firemen did not always use to start fires; they used to put them out, and people were not afraid. “I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise” (Bradbury 7). Clarisse questions his happiness, and Montag cannot answer confidently that he is fully happy with his life. …show more content…

When Montag reveals his secret stash of books in the attic, she nearly faints and tells him that he must burn them in the incinerator immediately. Throughout the novel, Montag struggles with individuality and making a difference despite dealing with his mind-blocked co-workers who quickly target him as the outsider and turn the Mechanical Hound loose on him. “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing” (Bradbury 51). He develops a plan with Faber, a man who remembers what the world was like before firemen began burning books. This plan just might be the key to regaining the people’s rights and restoring books to their rightful place in society. Firemen eliminated the people’s ability to express one’s own opinion when they eradicated books and free knowledge from the world. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury explores this idea of censorship and the fact that it bans individuality and the ability to express one’s

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