Fahrenheit 451 Essay, Research Paper

Guy Montag is a fireman in charge of burning books. A gentle young

girl named Clarisse McClellan opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with

her innocently penetrating questions and peculiar love of people and nature.

After his wife Mildred attempts suicide without even realizing what she is

doing, after he witnesses an old woman let herself be burned with her books,

and after he hears that Clarisse has been killed by a speeding car, Montag

searches for solutions to his rising dissatisfaction in a stash of books he has

stolen and hidden. He looks to Mildred for help and support, but she prefers

television to her husband’s company and cannot understand why he would

want to take the terrible risk of reading books.

Montag remembers an old intellectual named Faber with whom he

once talked in the park and goes to him for help in understanding what he

reads. Meanwhile, Beatty, Montag’s superior, has guessed that Montag is

experimenting with books and hints that he should turn in the book he stole

from the old woman’s library within 24 hours. Faber explains the value of

books to Montag, which lies in their ability to store and communicate

meaningful information, something which their society now lacks. He agrees to

help Montag and gives him a two-way radio which fits into his ear so that he

can hear what Montag hears and talk to him secretly. Montag goes home and

finds two of his wife’s friends there. Their superficiality angers him, and he

shows them a book of poetry and reads them one of the poems. Mildred tries

to explain this away as standard fireman procedure for proving to people how

useless books are, but the women leave quite disturbed and upset.

Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to

Beatty. Beatty browbeats him with his impressive knowledge of literature and

historical quotations, which he uses to support his argument that books are

dangerous and must be destroyed. An alarm comes through, and they rush off

to Montag’s own house. Mildred rushes out, and Montag realizes it was she

who put in the alarm. Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself, and

when he is done, he places him under arrest. Beatty continues to berate

Montag, who turns the flamethrower on his superior and proceeds to burn

him to ashes. Montag knocks the other firemen unconscious and begins to

run, when the Mechanical Hound, a monstrous machine which Beatty has set

to attack Montag, appears and pounces. Montag manages to destroy it with

his flamethrower, but not before it injects his leg with a large dose of

anesthetic. Montag walks off the numbness in his leg and escapes with some

books that were hidden in the backyard. He hides these in one of the other

firemen’s houses and calls in an alarm from a payphone.

He goes to Faber’s house, where he learns that a new Hound has been

put on his trail. Faber tells Montag he is leaving for St. Louis to see a retired

printer who may be able to help them, and Montag gives him some money

and tells him how to remove his scent from the house so the Hound will not

enter it. He takes some of Faber’s old clothes and runs off toward the river.

The whole city watches as the chase unfolds on TV, but Montag manages to

escape in the river and change into Faber’s clothes to disguise his scent. He

drifts downstream into the country and follows a set of abandoned railroad

tracks until he finds a group of renegade intellectuals led by a man named

Granger who welcome him. They are a part of a nationwide network of

book-lovers who have memorized many great works of literature and

philosophy. They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the

aftermath of the war that has just been declared. Enemy jets appear in the sky

and drop their bombs on the city, which is instantly vaporized. Montag and

the others turn and head up the river to see if they can help the survivors, and

Montag knows he will soon follow the other refugees out into the countryside,

where there will always be plenty to keep him fulfilled.