Fahrenheit 451: Montag Character Analysis Essay Sample

“It was a pleasure to burn.” These are the thoughts of a man who has lived his life in a society that has stripped humans of the right and privilege to learn, to think, to form opinions, and ultimately to feel. History, stories of strife and valor, kings waging wars, and leaders coming together for peace, passions, and dramas were brought to the lowest common denominator of ashes. This is a society that functions by burning books, politics, emotions, deep thoughts, and everything that makes humans humane. In Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury shows us what happens when the fireman Montag comes out of his comforting ignorance, and into the truth of the world he lives in. The story shows us his journey from a book burner to one who saves and stores knowledge in his mind.

Originally, Montag is like any other individual living in this dystopian world, working as a fireman burning books. He is soon torn out of this reality in the following conversation with his neighbor Clarisse: “‘Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.’ He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable.” Clarisse’s comments about things such as the “dew on the grass” begin to bring Montag to the realization that he has been living life on autopilot, never stopping to enjoy the simple yet complex things like the dew on the grass or the “man” on the moon. When Montag witnesses the joy on the teenage girl's face he realizes that “He was not happy. He was not happy.” When the girl left he felt as if “He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.” The interaction between the two is the initial push that sparks Montag’s curiosity to break out of the sterilel mold of his society and begins to alter his viewpoints on knowledge in general.

The next step in Montag’s transformation happens after multiple interactions with his wife, he describes her as someone he once loved but who is now “A silly empty woman” and himself as a “silly empty man.” When his wife nearly died he didn’t feel sad, “For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death.” Montag realizes how wrong the life he leads is, one without understanding or any real emotion. He has a mental necessity to feel and know more.  

The final step in Montag’s transformation from a mindless clone into a thinking man is the conversation with Faber. This is when he realizes he was not just looking to read books but to understand what’s in them: “l don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.” Montag has come to the understanding that “Something’s missing”, but he doesn’t quite know what, he still clings to the thought that perhaps an item can solve his problems, such as reading the books. Faber corrects him with the following statement: “It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisions, but are not. No, no, it’s not the books at all you’re looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.” As Faber says “It’s not books you need” it is the stories and lessons that “once were in books.” Stories that would help us understand ourselves and others, which can be projected in all forms of media but this case can only be found in literature. At this point Montag’s outlook on knowledge begins to shift, from one of fright and seeing the books as dangerous objects, to cautiously perceiving the knowledge within the books as a key to something greater.

Once Montag understands that books are a gate to living a real-life, he devises a plan to bring down the fireman from within, with hopes to demolish the suppressive system and bring books back into mainstream society. The plan is foiled and Montag winds up on the run from the police before hiding in the safety of the countryside. There, he meets the men of the railroad, men like “Harris in Youngstown” who is the book of Ecclesiastes, and “Simmons” who is Marcus Aurelius. All these men have discovered the one way of passing down knowledge and the last remnants of what makes humanity special, by storing it all in the mind, the one place that society cannot directly get to. And so, Montag joins their ranks with a new understanding, while remaining apprehensive he realizes the books and as long as you have that knowledge stored somewhere, you’ll always be able to restore it. That is how he escaped the blaze.

Montag made a tremendous transition throughout the story. Starting as a man who believed that books were the root of all evil in society like any other individual. Slowly being introduced to the simple wonders of knowledge by his neighbor Clarise, and then being driven to do something so that he does not wind up as a hollow shell-like his wife. And finally, by learning the ways of the men on the railroad, Montag learned that books and knowledge, in general, are what makes humans humane. Knowledge is how he escaped the blaze.