Guy Montag Character Development in Fahrenheit 451 Essay Example

In Fahrenheit 451, we go through the life of a man named Guy Montag who is a fireman who burns books in a society that believes books are very troublesome. Throughout this book, Montag develops a lot as a character and finds his motivations, but his motivations contradict each other.

Montag's character development begins when a 17-year-old woman named Clarisse McClellan gives him a lecture and asks, "Are you happy?" she said. Am I what? He cried... Happy! Of all the nonsense ... Of course, I'm happy. What does she think? I'm not? "(Bradbury 8) This was the key reason for him to understand the society he lives in and to realize that he was not happy and living a wrong life. The next morning he wakes up from a normal fireman who always obeys the law to a man who defies the law. He started taking books from people's houses that he was burning so that he can satisfy his wants to explore more about what society is hiding. As Montag reads all of these books he is stealing from these houses, he realizes that the government and society were all wrong and that he was unhappy because of them. Once he understood this, he began to become an advocate for literature and culture, leading him to have to run away from society. 

The next subject in Fahrenheit 451 is that Montag has a couple of motivations, but these motivations contradict with each other. Some of his motivations are to find the truth and to dig deeper about life and his society, to find something that will make him happy, also to find a way to help his wife because he loves her and he hates it when she overdoses. How these motivations contradict with each other is that in order for Montag to find happiness and to find the truth and to dig deeper about his life and society is that he would have to read books, but during this time books are extremely illegal and aren’t allowed to be read. This is a problem because his job consists of him burning peoples books because they were caught reading them or having them in their houses. Another reason why his motivations contradict with each other is because he said that he loves his wife and he will do anything to help her from overdosing, but at the end of the book she betrays him by telling the firemen that he has books and he is forced to burn his house down. 

Montag has experienced a lot in this story and has somewhat found the true meaning of life and has found what his society really is. At the end of the story it really shows that Montag has developed as a character, but with that it showed that his “motivations' ' contradict with each other.