Ray Bradbury’s Novel Fahrenheit 451: An Analysis
Sophia Rogg Lopez E Track World Literature, Fahrenheit 451 Final Essay In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, life loses meaning from the impersonal and muted lifestyle that society offers.
The annihilation of books provides the stable environment where ignorance can win over curiosity, leaving innocence in ones mind. When Montag meets Clarisse McClellan, his neighbor with an essence of unusual quality, she introduces a new perspective of life into Montag’s eyes for the first time. From the way she looks at the trees, to the way she walks, something inside of her possess a ravenous urge to learn and explore.Clarisse fascinates Montag almost immediately for she communicates clearly, “Isn’t this a nice time of night to walk? I like to smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise” (Bradbury 7). The vibrant personality of Clarisse stands unlike anything Guy has ever seen, triggering the realization of how dead the human mind lays. For the first time, he begins to see a difference between his lifestyle and vitality itself.
Proving herself different from others, Clarisse mentions, “I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly” (Bradbury 9).The furious driving above the speed limit stands to represent how life carries from one blur to the next, and how the moments in between to stop and look at detail, are few. No one has time for anyone else, showing no consideration to the aspects of life that carry great weight. Guy confirms the significance of books when his neighbor, Mrs. Blake, takes her life to represent how life without substance, isn’t life at all. Books represent the details in life which go unnoticed, provide the knowledge of personal relationships, and the intellectual reality that lay forgotten.
After seeing such a lady go so quickly to something never thought more of than merely just a thing, “His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything” (Bradbury 41). Instantly changed, it was clear there was no going back. The value of Montag’s life increases when he removes himself from the demeaning and lifeless environment of which society imposes. Separated from the city, nature provides Montag the opportunity to think in quiet, and to raise the value of life as high as wanted.
After being caught with books of his own, Guy realized that in order to make something out of his life he would need to escape. Before fleeing town however, Montag rebelliously burns Beatty with a flamethrower, in honor of all the books burned through Beatty’s years at work. In the wilderness, he runs into a group of men and woman who are on the same mission as he is, a mission to preserve knowledge. A mission to be able to think with a clear mind, preserve the knowledge books hold, and question the surroundings around them. Truly living for the best, ” All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need intact and safe.
We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good”(Bradbury 152). The value of Montags life is increasing for he is starting to find a meaning in it, the meaning of preserving knowledge. Being away from life in the city, Montag can feel each second pass by, can look at each wrinkle on a tree, and can taste the rain that falls from the sky. He can begin to soak up the life he has been living in for his whole life, but not experiencing until now.
Curiosity sweeps over him to explore what he has been missing for so many years, the hidden reality books have stored inside of them.Without books, nobody has the desire to learn or question anything, for they do not know knowledge to base if off of. Now free, “We’ll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now” (Bradbury 162). Montag stands as a mature leader for he accepts there was a problem, and takes the situation into his own hands to make matters better. Guy Montag shows how even when times are black and white, and nothing stands out from the next, the only person in control of one’s own destiny is themselves.
