Content Test: Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of Guy Montag and his transformation from a book-burning fireman to a book-reading rebel. Montag lives in an oppressive society that attempts to eliminate all sources of complexity, contradiction, and confusion to ensure uncomplicated happiness for all its citizens.

Hero’s Journey

1. Ordinary World - Guy Montag is burning books as a fireman, he experienced pleasure doing what he does
2. Call To Adventure - On his way home, Montag encounters a young girl, Clarisse McClellan. She is fascinated by him and in the end, asks Montag if he is truly happy. This is his call to adventure as one simple question causes him to question everything around him.
3. Refusal Of The Call - Montag tries to ignore the question but eventually realizes he is not happy.
4. Meeting The Mentor - In the beginning, Beatty gives the impression that he will be the mentor. However, we do not meet the real mentor until Faber is introduced properly as he is the one who gets Montag prepared and teaches him about books. Montag met Faber a while before.
5. Crossing The Threshold - Montag takes a book from a house he is burning down out of instinct as he watches the owner and her books burn.
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies - Faber gives Montag an earpiece, tries to teach his wife about the books, and Beatty is revealed to be the enemy. Beatty gives many hints that he knows about Montag’s stolen books.
7. Approach To The Inmost Cave - Acts unusually around his wife’s friends as he reads aloud poetry, this sets off the worry of being exposed
8. Ordeal - Montag kills Beatty when Montag burns his own house down and is attacked by the hound, running off into the woods
9. Reward (Seizing The Sword) - He successfully got away from the authorities, this is shown when the media shows the chase ending with a random man being captured. He is free from the strict rules of his society.
   10. The Road Back - Montag searches for those out there who will help
   11. Resurrection - Montag meets the old men out and away from the city. He is invited to join them.
   12. Return With The Elixir - Once the war is over, Montag is prepared to go back and help rebuild the world with the knowledge he learnt from books

Part 1: The Hearth and the Salamander

• Montag is introduced

• Clarisse envokes a change in Montag’s attitude towards society

• Mildred overdoses and is taken care of with machines, not taken to the hospital

• Clarisse and Montag keep talking, they have a bond - daughter and father-like

• The hound does not like Montag and suddenly, Clarisse is gone

• History of firemen is said to have always been to set fire not put the fire out, Montag is suspicious

• They are called to a house with a woman, she refuses to leave and sets her house on fire with her there

• Montag took a book, it is hidden underneath his pillow

• Mildred reveals Clarisse has died

• Mildred and Montag argue over feeling guilt about the woman

• Beatty arrives at his door and tells Montag what he is feeling will pass

• He explains why books are to burn:

  • Rapid technological advancement has caused books to decrease in popularity, information is more quickly digestible
  • Things needed to be shorter and shorter: headlines not paragraphs
  • Minorities and special-interest groups found so many things in books offensive and hurtful that people abandoned debate and started burning books.
  • EASY PLEASURE AND CONTROVERSIAL

• Mildred finds the book under his pillow

• Firemen’s new mission of burning books could help prevent a person to excel intellectually,

  spiritually, and practically over others and so make everyone else feel inferior

• Montag wants to leave his job and shows Mildred his stash of books in the ventilator

• Mildred does not want to keep these books but stays put

• Someone comes to the door, but they do not answer and he goes away

Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand

• Montag and Mildred spend time reader
• The Mechanical Hound comes to the door but leaves
• Mildred doesn’t like this and prefers her fake program family
• Montag feels that books must somehow be able to help him out of his ignorance, but he does not understand what he is reading and decides that he must find a teacher
• Montag finds Faber, an old English Professor, who he previously met in a park one year ago
• Montag calls Faber and speaks about the Bible, finding out he has one of the only copies left of it
• Mildred’s friends plan to come over
• Montag takes a train to see Faber, connecting his experience to an old memory of a sieve and the sand, FUTILE EFFORT
• Montag speaks to Faber, alleviating the fear the old man once had
• Faber says that people need quality information, the leisure to digest it, and the freedom to act on what they learn
• Montag suggests planting books in the homes of firemen to discredit the profession and see the firehouses burn
• Montag bullies Faber out of his cowardice by tearing pages out of the precious Bible one by one, and Faber finally agrees to help, revealing that he knows someone with a printing press who used to print his college newspaper.
• Faber created a two-way radio system for him and Montag to use for communication
• Mildred’s friends arrive when he returns and Montag begins to read them poetry
• To cover up Montag’s decision, Mildred lies to her friends about the nature of it
• Montag reads the women “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold
• One woman, Mrs, Phelps, begins to cry and the other one calls the poetry evil and it shouldn’t be so emotionally messy
• Montag burns the book and hides the rest outside, away from Mildred
• Montag goes to work and hands the book to Beatty
• The alarm goes off and they are taken to Montag’s house

Part 3: Burning Bright

• Mildred is revealed to have called the alarm, heading into a taxi with a suitcase
• Montag burns everything, and when he is finished, Beatty places him under arrest.
• The radio Faber has created is destroyed by Beatty
• After taunting Montag, Montag turns his flamethrower on Beatty and burns him to a crisp
• Montag knocks the other firemen out
• The Mechanical Hound appears and injects Montag’s leg with anesthetic before he manages to destroy it with his flamethrower
• Police have been alerted and Montag runs
• He washes his face and overhears that war has been declared in a gas station washroom
• He is nearly hit by a speeding car
• He plants a book in a fireman’s house and calls in an alarm
• Montag arrives at Faber’s place, gives him money, and changes into Faber’s clothes to throw off the hounds searching for him
• Faber instructs him to follow the old railroad tracks out of town to look for camps of homeless intellectuals and tells Montag to meet him in St. Louis sometime in the future, where he is going to meet a retired printer
• Montag sees a more advanced hound has been set out and he tells the old man to clean anything Montag has touched
• He successfully avoids being caught and makes his way to the river
• He drifts away in the current to avoid the hound and washes ashore in the countryside
• Follows railway track, leading to five men around a campfire
• Granger, the leader, invites Montag to join them
• Granger gives Montag a bottle of colourless fluid to drink and explains that it will change the chemical index of his perspiration so the Hound will not be able to find him
• The media kills another man, not admitting they lost Montag
• He introduces Montag to the other men, who are all former professors and intellectuals. He tells Montag that they have perfected a method of recalling word-for-word anything that they have read once
• Part of a network of thousands, Granger says that Montag is important because he represents their “backup copy” of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
• Granger says that his group is waiting for humanity to become ready for books again so that they can be of some use to the world
• They will wait, pass down books through generations through speech
• They expect another Dark Age and they will go through the same thing all over again
• Montag worries about Mildred, but finally, it is revealed, he doesn't love her
• War begins and ends in seconds, the city destroyed
• The men are knocked flat by the shock wave. As he clings to the earth, Montag mentally pictures Mildred just as she’s about to meet her death.
• Granger compares mankind to a phoenix rising again and again from its own ashes and comments that they will first need to build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves.
• Montag becomes the leader as they walk toward the ashes with a desire to rebuild society