Ian Sacba

Mr. Choi

H English

02/28/2019

Fahrenheit 451 

Imagine living in a future dystopian society in which you are oppressed by a lying

government. There’s nothing you can do about it except go along and play their game. That’s the

case of a story written by Ray Bradbury, in which the government is oppressive and lies to their

people. This government not only lies and oppresses, but they also burn books because they are

illegal. The book is ​Fahrenheit 451​, written around the 1950. During that time period the Cold

War was still alive and world war 2 had just recently ended. During these time periods, there

were many things going on with books. The Nazis burned books that were against their ideology.

After world war 2, Americans did the same thing but they stopped and later started censoring

books written by Nazis. So this inspired Bradbury to write this book, a book where in America

books are illegal and are burned to ash. The three characters living in that dystopian society are

Guy Montag, Clarisse and Beatty. Guy being the protagonist and dealing with internal and

external conflict. Beatty being the anti hero and antagonist and dealing with external conflict.

Lastly Clarisse being a static character and faces external conflict.

The first character is Clarisse McClellan, she is a static character and doesn’t undergo

any change whatsoever in the story but she isn’t a bad person. She helps Guy Montag find out

the truth about his society and what really is happening in their world. She is the girl who has a

spirit of a nice playful child who knows how things are.Yet the conflicts she had been through

with society, it never broke her and she enjoyed being who she was. An example of Clarisse’s

conflict is, “ I’m anti-social, they say. I don’t mix… I haven't any friends. That's supposed to
prove im abnormal… I'm afraid of children my own age. ” Just because of who she is, people

don't like her, or they hate her. They try to make her believe she is anti-social and abnormal, but

she knows she isn’t. Yet she fears her peers or other kids around her age because they are

dangerous and can make things worse. The quote, “ I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill

each other…I'm afraid of them and they don't like me” shows that her being different can lead to

some serious problems. Just because of her being different can lead to her death. It can be with or

without warning. There were people who observed her and found her as a threat. One of those

people was Captain Beatty.

The second character is Captain Beatty, he is a round character, is the foil, anti-hero and

the antagonist of the story. He is the chief of his firemen crew, and in that crew is Guy montag.

They are friends with each other until later conflict, and Beatty knows a vast amount of

knowledge of literature. However with that knowledge he is a paradox. He says that books are a

problem because they hurt other yet he quotes books to manipulate Montag or he references

them. An example is “Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation.

You think you can walk on water with your books.” He references the bible quite a lot and the

Bible is a banned book in society. It also shows how Beatty manipulates Montag with the

knowledge he has from books even though he states that he hates books. Montag later realizes

that Beatty is a threat after he discovered that he is hiding books. Beatty confronts Montag at his

home and makes him burn down his house. Beatty says “What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientists

give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beauty is

that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the

furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders..”. Then

Montag surprisingly does what Beatty says and shoots him with the flamethrower and kills him.

Beatty knew he had a weapon and he was testing him, its like if he wanted to die. Yet throughout

the story, Montag had to go through many things.

and has problems with himself and “friends”. He was a fireman with his captain being Beatty, he

had a love and passion for book burning and just burning things in general. Later on he faces

Beatty at his home and it doesn't go very well for someone. However after meeting a girl named

Clarisse, he begins to question everything he knows. After a book burning, a woman stayed in

her burning house with the books. Montag then begins to doubt and wonders “ There must be

something in books, things we can't imagine to make a woman stay in a burning house, there

must be something there” (Bradbury x). Montag then starts having some self conflicts and stays

home to not go to work. He steals books and begins to collect and read them. Beatty later finds

out and makes him burn his house. Then Montag aimed the gun at Beatty he started to test

Montag. Then Montag pulls the trigger and, “And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping,

sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as

Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.” He kills Beatty after he pushed his

limits and then he has to run away since he is now a criminal. The city is then bombed and is

completely annihilated, he then meets new people out of the city and becomes their leader. Then

we never hear of him again.

At the end of the day, all of this chaos happened just because books were illegal. The

main theme of the novel Fahrenheit 451 is censorship. Since they're trying to stop books from

“spreading” or people reading them because they are always contradicting. Which is the point of

books, nowadays people don’t like what books say because that's not how they see their point of

view, so the other opinion is worthless. Instead of having proper discussions a having civil

discourses, people don't listen the the other side and jump to conclusions. So they censor them,

not letting them speak or do something because it offends them or makes them unhappy. This

book is like a warning, a warning to the people of the future. Sadly the dystopian society that's

the “perfect society” is starting to upsurge in the world today. Yet there are many people in favor
of that, when we know that is wrong and unjust. So if something nowadays is offensive or rude

to a minority or majority, regarding it being factual or not, thanks to the people who are now

more sensitive than before, must be taken down because it doesn't respects ones feeling or

opinions.