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 "
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. 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.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Guy Montag, Montag Faber, Writers Guild, Captain Beatty, Senator McCarthy, Ray Bradbury, crazy woman, , today's society, woman house, faber tells, salem witch, american history, people passed,
Approximate Word count = 1050
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
