“Fahrenheit 451” is a dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury that explores the darker sides of technological advancement and how an oppressive government could suppress the spread and pursuit of knowledge. It describes a future society where books are banned, and possession of books is punished by burning the books and the owner’s house.
“Fahrenheit 451″ is divided into three parts: The Hearth and the Salamander, The Sieve and the Sand, and Burning Bright.
Part 1: Hearth & The Salamander
The first part of “Fahrenheit 451″ begins with the introduction of fireman Guy Montag burning books at work and enjoying the experience. At the end of his shift, he returns home and meets his neighbor, a young girl named Clarisse McClellan. She informs Montag that she is “17 and insane” and begins to ask him many questions. Montag is troubled by this meeting as Clarisse’s questions force him to think deeply before answering them rather than giving superficial canned answers.
Clarisse is an example of a literary trope called “manic pixie girl.” She is often a young and odd girl who serves as a foil to the status quo and is used to spark a reaction from the main character. Conveniently, in “Fahrenheit 451“, she dies after serving the purpose of inciting Montag’s character change.
On returning home, he finds his wife Mildred in a coma from an overdose of sleeping pills. The technicians who responded to his call for help informed him that incidents like this are common. When Mildred wakes up the next day, she claims not to remember taking an overdose and is cheery and refuses to engage Montag in a frank talk.
Montag continues to meet with Clarisse, but she suddenly disappears, leaving him saddened and concerned. Meanwhile, the firemen are dispatched to a house with a hidden library belonging to an old woman, which marks the rising action. They tear the house apart and prepare to burn it. To their surprise, the old woman sets herself and her books ablaze rather than surrendering them. This incident affects Montag deeply. Acting on an impulse in the chaos, he steals a Bible.
Back at home, Montag tries to engage Mildred in meaningful communication, but her inability to hold even a simple conversation frustrates him. He learns from her that Clarisse was killed in a car accident.
The incident with the old woman leaves a deep impression on Montag, and he decides to take a break from work, claiming illness. Mildred is troubled by the development as she fears they would lose their possessions if he loses his job.
While Mildred’s character is annoying, I have sympathy for her. Like her husband, she didn’t have the privilege of meeting Clarisse. From the plot, she appears to be a stay-at-home partner, and all she knows is what she learned from the television. Even when Montag tries to draw her closer to him, it is suggested that they lead separate lives. Montag only seems to be trying to recreate the sort of relationship he had with Clarisse.
His boss, Captain Beatty, visits him, ostensibly to inquire about his health. Montag’s growing inner conflict prompts him to engage in a tense conversation with Beatty about the government’s book-burning policy. Captain Beatty explains that the book burning began as a response to people’s intolerance of ideas in literature. The authorities decided to eliminate most of the books to prevent future trouble. Suspecting Montag of stealing a book, Captain Beatty warns him that a fireman who steals a book has twenty-four hours to burn it. If the fireman fails to do so, the fire department burns down his house.
Montag reveals his hidden collection of books to Mildred. She is horrified and tries to burn the stash, but Montag stops her.
Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand
In the second part of “Fahrenheit 451″, at the book’s turning point, Montag tries to convince his wife that the books may have some value that would justify preserving them. He suggests that the books may even answer the problems they currently face as a society, particularly the threat of a nuclear war. She remains unconvinced.
Frustrated at finding no help from his wife’s quarters, he remembers Faber, an English professor he met once in a park before the book burnings. He calls Faber, but Faber hangs up when he brings up the topic of books. Montage decides to visit him, taking the Bible he stole from the old woman’s house.
At Faber’s house, he tries in vain to convince a scared Faber to help him in his quest to restore interest in books in their society. When Faber expresses reluctance to help, he begins tearing pages from the Bible. This action horrifies Faber, who agrees to help, but only from afar. Faber gives Montag a communication device he could fit in his ear, through which Faber would listen to Montag’s words and give him directions and advice.
Faber represents the ineffectual egghead, comfortable behind a desk, who would write tomes to defend an idea but would shrink away when there’s a real danger to his life. Bradbury famously had dim views about a university education. He did not consider it essential to developing one’s ability to think. I wonder if he channels this disregard in his portrayal of Faber, who is all talk and has little action.
On returning home, Montag finds Mildred and her friends engrossed in a viewing party. He turns off the parlor wall screens and tries to draw them into meaningful conversation. However, they are ignorant, insensitive, and unconcerned about every event other than their distractions. Montag takes out a book of poetry and reads it to his guests. This action disturbs his wife and her friends so much that one begins to cry. Mildred tries to calm them and cover up her husband’s action, claiming that it is a ritual firemen do once a year to remind people of how useless books are.
Montag buries his cache of books and takes the Bible to the firehouse. He hands it to Captain Beatty, who accepts it. Captain Beatty reveals to Montag that he was once a reader and knows how confusing and ultimately unhelpful books can be. A call comes in, and the firemen ride their truck to a house burning. The destination is Montag’s house.
Part 3: Burning Bright
The climax of “Fahrenheit 451″ begins when Captain Beatty tells Montag that the call to raid his house came from his wife and her friends. He orders Montag to set his house on fire using a flamethrower. Mildred steps out of the house in a daze. She is more distressed at the loss of the parlor wall screens and the house than with the fate of her husband. She gets into a taxi and leaves. After Montag destroys his house, Captain Beatty discovers the communication device in his ear, his connection to Faber. Captain Beatty threatens to hunt down Faber and taunts Montag, who snaps and burns Beatty with the flamethrower.
Bradbury makes a brilliant use of foreshadowing here. At the beginning of the book, Montag imagines that the mechanical hound at the station wants to kill him. Captain Beatty dismissed his fears as unfounded. Eventually, the hound chases after him, and he narrowly escapes with his life.
A mechanical hound chases Montag and shoots him in the leg with a tranquilizer, but he manages to destroy it and escapes. He also evades joyriding kids who attempt to run him over in a vehicle, a similar fate Clarisse is suspected to have fallen to. He meets Faber, who advises him to flee the countryside outside the city and join a group of drifters, book lovers living in exile there. Faber, himself, is to run to St. Louis.
Once Montag leaves Faber’s house, he finds he has become the subject of a city-wide manhunt. He tries to elude another mechanical hound, and helicopters join the chase. Montag washes off his scent by jumping into a river to the city’s outskirts, drifting downstream, and losing the mechanical hound trailing him. The book’s falling action starts when Montag joins the book-loving drifters around a fire by the rail tracks and is in time to witness on television the broadcast of the mechanical hound killing someone else and the authorities announcing to have eliminated Montag.
The drifters, led by Granger, welcome him and inform him that they all have memorized books and part of books. They are essentially human libraries, and they hope to preserve and restore the books when society needs them again. Then, as they watch, bombs destroy the city; they are far away enough to escape unharmed. In the novel’s denouement, these book lovers return to rebuild the city and society.
The novel’s resolution is bleak, suggesting that a whole city is destroyed with all its inhabitants. But there’s a hint of hope. The drifters carry back knowledge to rebuild the lost society. However, the drifters’ casual and even callous reaction to such a catastrophic event seems at odds with the horror we should expect from the witnesses in the aftermath of a nuclear obliteration.
