Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel by an American writer Ray Bradbury, written in 1953. It
is based in a future American society where books are illegal and a job called ‘firemen’ is established
who burns every books that are found. This novel is written in third person with a fireman named
Montag being the main protagonist. After his encounter with an absurd girl Clarisse, he questions his
current occupation and starts collecting books. In this process, he pursues his recent flashback of a
man named Faber and visits his house to collaborate on his mission of repopulating the world with
books (They primarily plan on planting books in the homes of firemen themselves). However, Montag
gets found out by the Mechanical Hound from his fire department and he runs away.
The main theme of this novel is censorship of books and information. The government limits
their citizens’ access to books to control them. This is first represented in Part 1 when Clarisse asks
Montag ‘Do you read any of the books you burn?’ and Montag clarifies by adamantly stating ‘That’s
illegal’. Then later on in Part 1, Montag gets ill after witnessing the old lady burn with her books, and
his superior in his fire department, Captain Beatty, visits his house. Captain Beatty, after sensing that
Montag may be holding books secretly, warns him. ‘Firemen were given a 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.’ In this part of the monologue, Beatty is justifying their actions of
burning books and this line highlights to achieve a euphoric society, one person should not be more
intelligent than another: which can be achieved my abolishing books. However, although it is noted
that many of the people in the novel are not interested in books, avoiding books do not always lead to
peace. Within the same monologue, Captain Beatty additionally elucidates, ‘If you don’t want a man
unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet,
give him none.’ and this suggests how books always have contradicting perspectives on a same issue
that could further cause conflict. Moreover, the government thinks that in this way, people will only
attain information from being told the same news by their earpieces (such as ‘Seashells’) and
televisions, evoking them to have the same ideas.
Clarisse McClellan has only appeared for a short section of Part 1, but can be classified as one
of the most prominent characters to appear. She is Montag’s teenage neighbor who in an outcast
amongst her age group for being ‘different’. She questions ‘why’ rather than ‘how’ which bemuses
and exasperates people. On the first encounter with Montag, she asks, ‘Are you happy?’ and this
question startles him because he has not processed this kind of thought in a long time. Thus, he has
assumed, as a successful fireman, that he is happy. This becomes the first influential comment in a
series of events that causes Montag to examine his life and analyse his happiness. When Montag
reaches home, he discovers that Mildred has attempted suicide and the question then expands beyond
whether he is happy to whether his wife is, and finally, to whether their society allows people to be
happy. Clarisse's question is the catalyst for Montag to change the trajectory of his life. Montag
observes his wife overdose on the same night and later witnesses a woman commit suicide alongside
her books. These traumatic experiences coupled with Clarisse's influential question encourage Montag
to quit his job and turn toward literature for answers.
The overall tone of this novel is intense and sombre. The most intense part of the novel is in
Part 3 where the ominous scenery is presented through the anticipations of the nuclear bombing.
Montag shouts ‘Get out, run!’ to Mildred imaginarily. This single line paragraph amplifies the impact
of sense of shock and the Italian font it is written in emphasizes the apocalyptic atmosphere. The fact
that Montag thought about Mildred who is not next to him and even has betrayed him, shows that this
scene was such a chaotic time that he came to think about his almost non-existing wife.
Another equally severe section is when the totalitarian police chases Montag after he kills Beatty in
front of his house. The confront with the Mechanical Hound and the police presents an abundant
amount of catastrophic mood and this is because a sequence of events happen one after another so
quickly and the description blends those all together creating a befuddling image. Especially the
switch between Montag’s real situation and the description of the television that is broadcasting
Montag’s chase leads to flummoxed imagery.