FREE ESSAY ON FAHRENHEIT451

FAHRENHEIT451

In the book, Guy Montag, the main character, begins to question the things around him when
he meets a local girl. He quickly feels comfortable with her and they begin to have
discussions about mundane things that seem to open up Montag's eyes. Then one day, the
girl is gone. In a short few weeks, he had become dependant on the girl's company. Once
she is gone, he finds himself changed by having known her. When he goes to work on one of
the following days, there is a fire alarm. He and the other fireman rush to answer the
call, and discover an old woman in a house with books and magazines in her attic. They
quickly gather the illegal materials together, and douse them in kerosene. They are
trying to coax the "crazy" woman out of the house, when she brings out a match. Guy stays
and tried to talk her out of it, but is unsuccessful. This experience haunts him all
night and into the next day. He doesn't go to work the next day, and his boss, Beatty,
knows why.
I think that this "crazy" woman is a representation of the beliefs of the Salem witch
trials. People all around them were calling them devil worshipers and telling them that
they were going to hell. Even though they knew it would be certain death, as did the
"crazy" lady, they stood fast with their beliefs and died for them. She represents a
courage that most common people don't have. She knew that she had to be true to herself.
Beatty comes to Guys' house and tells him the "truth" about the origin of firemen. He
tells him that people before the civil war were very simple. They had books, but it
didn't really matter because there was no mass to it. Once the technological revolution
came about, people stopped wanting all the excess that was included in the book. People
became more interested in the snap ending, the quick pay-off. Because of this, people
began to neglect teaching things like philosophy and sociology in school. No one needed
it; they were all learning to be professional athletes or mechanics, or some other simple
job where no book learning was required. The simple fact that the bigger the population
that you have, the more minorities you get took affect. People were afraid to write
because they didn't want to offend anyone. Books became nothing, not important,
meaningless. There was no official ordinance, no censorship to start the firemen's job of
burning books, people had brought it upon themselves, and now all that was left for them
to read were the comic books and "three dimensional sex magazines." But that was what
they wanted.
This is the point in the story where Montag realizes that he and Captain Beatty are
becoming enemies, and also that he needs to find someone else to listen to and learn
from. Every assignment he takes a book before he burns the rest, and one day he even
keeps a bible. He remembers talking to a very knowledgeable man named Faber. He spoke
with him at the park and took his address for "possible future investigations." He finds
the address there and goes to his house. Faber is apprehensive at first, because Montag
is a fireman. The second time they meet, he realizes that Montag is sincere. Faber tells
him the importance of books in society, and Montag tells him of the bible he found.
Montag shows Faber the bible that he had stolen. Faber tells him that he is a very timid
man, but will go and see a man with a printing press for him.
I think that Bradbury chose Beatty to tell the story because, out of all the characters
in the story, he would be the one most likely to know the most about it. He is a
hard-working man that does his job without regrets. He feels that he knows a lot about
his job, and he does. What he doesn't understand is how much Montag had changed in the
past week. He is a completely different man. He wants to have his own thoughts and ideas,
as well as have a family, he knew that he had a "family", but he wanted a real one that
would be there with him through the good times and the bad, some people to share his life
with.
This book has many allusions to important events in American history. The fire represents
the potential in today's society for evil. The entire story represents the type of
thinking in American history of both the Salem witch trial and the McCarthy trials in the
American 20th century. 
This book was written in protest to the latter. Senator McCarthy used innuendos and guilt
by association to accuse members of Hollywood of being communist. Ray Bradbury was one of
the people who objected to the oath that Screen Writers Guild required of its members to
protect itself from communism. He got the inspiration to write the book one day as he was
walking along a sidewalk and he was pulled over by a police officer. They had an argument
and Ray went home to write a short-story called "The Pedestrian" about a society that had
outlawed walking.
I feel that in today's society, people are more open to new things than they used to be.
Different types of people are popping up all over the world with little or no trouble. A
big part of this is the way the generation before us was brought up. They were maturing
during a very difficult time and they had to make many adjustments to accommodate all the
people that they did. They passed that down to us. One important thing that people have
passed down to us is not to judge others by race, sex, sexual preference, or even where
they are from, We are expected to come to out own conclusions about people, no one can do
that for us.