Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
This book takes place in a grim, dystopian future. Its message is more pertinent now than it has ever been.
The fireman is Guy Montag. His responsibility is to destroy both the homes where they are hidden and the printed book, the most illicit of all goods. As Montag returns to his boring life and his wife, Mildred, who spends the entire day with her television “family,” he never doubts the destruction and ruins his activities cause. Montag, however, starts to question everything he has ever known when he befriends an eccentric young neighbour named Clarisse. Clarisse introduces Montag to a past in which people didn’t live in fear and a present in which people view the world through the ideas in books rather than the mindless chatter of television.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
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Guy Montag, the story’s main character, actually starts out as something of a villain. He works as a future-based firefighter, who doesn’t actually put out flames the way they used to. In actuality, they do so on a regular basis. What a smart turn from Bradbury.
These firemen are authorized to burn books and the homes they are contained in by a government, the existence of which one can only assume to be dystopian. In this dystopian future, the government has declared books to be hazardous because they promote ideas that conflict with the narrative they are trying to create and because they are broadcast on television that take up entire walls in people’s homes. And the public wants it because they are more at ease with the information their government provides. How ominously dystopian.
Every time Montag gets to burn those nasty books, a smile spreads over his face, showing how much he enjoys his work. That is until he develops an interest in Clarisse, a young neighbour girl. Many feminists regrettably ignore Clarisse, a female character who plays a crucial role in the narrative’s overall development. Bradbury did well to adopt this strategy because, as they say, “behind every great man, there’s an equally amazing woman.” Of course, this does not always imply a spouse, and Bradbury made full use of this fact by drawing a contrast with Montag’s unimpressive wife.
Clarisse is able to somehow access Montag’s emotional capacity in order to better comprehend who or what exactly his job is harming, as well as how his otherwise uninteresting life—which includes an uninteresting wife who serves as an excellent illustration of the brainwashed zombie-like members of his society—could be made significantly richer by. Our wicked protagonist has some kind of madness as a result of this meeting with not just Clarisse but also himself. And thus his character evolution starts, which is what really propels the novel forward and draws the reader into the protagonist’s development and plot arc.
