Being social creatures, humans have great influence on one another’s lives. Their actions, sayings, beliefs, and opinions can transform the personalities of the people around them and have an effect on their perspectives of the world. Oftentimes, if there is a great majority of people that have the same viewpoint, it engulfs their society until everyone is thinking about the world in the same way. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, people do not care for interacting with each other, but are only interested in materialistic things, such as televisions and cars. Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to burn books and erase all past knowledge about what their society was like before, encounters several people who challenge his beliefs and prompt him to go against the grain. A young outcast from society, a woman burned
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With influence from Clarisse, Mrs. Blake, and Faber, Montag undergoes a major transformation as a character, his persona ultimately shifting from being indifferent about the flaws in his society to impassioned about changing them.
By compelling Montag to think about his dissatisfaction with his life, Clarisse McClellan acts as a catalyst for Montag’s conversion of character by helping him realize the faults in their materialistic and destructive society. After meeting Montag, young girl Clarisse asks him if he’s happy as she leaves for home, to which he comes to realize that “He [wears] his happiness like a mask and [Clarisse] 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” (Bradbury 12). Montag’s society, who focus solely on trivial matters such as money and material items, are not used to speaking about topics such as people, nature, and happiness. By stimulating his thought process, Clarisse pushes Montag into self-realization, and he begins to take notice
With influence from Clarisse, Mrs. Blake, and Faber, Montag undergoes a major transformation as a character, his persona ultimately shifting from being indifferent about the flaws in his society to impassioned about changing them.
By compelling Montag to think about his dissatisfaction with his life, Clarisse McClellan acts as a catalyst for Montag’s conversion of character by helping him realize the faults in their materialistic and destructive society. After meeting Montag, young girl Clarisse asks him if he’s happy as she leaves for home, to which he comes to realize that “He [wears] his happiness like a mask and [Clarisse] 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” (Bradbury 12). Montag’s society, who focus solely on trivial matters such as money and material items, are not used to speaking about topics such as people, nature, and happiness. By stimulating his thought process, Clarisse pushes Montag into self-realization, and he begins to take notice