In the gripping dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, author Ray Bradbury explores a daunting future where books are burned and disgraced. Full of warnings to humanity, this novel suggests that questioning ourselves and our society and seeking knowledge are essential to our humanity. Without the ability to ask these fundamental questions, humans become dysfunctional and society disintegrates. Bradbury shows us the consequences on humanity through three characters of vastly different personalities and perspectives: Beatty’s cynicism and bitterness, the sleepless nights and overdoses of Mildred, and Montag's rage and hopelessness.
Beatty, as the antagonist, is complex character who is contradictory and confusing. As the book progresses the reader …show more content…
As an average member of her society, she is completely unaware that her scope of knowledge is incomplete and therefore does not consciously know about the effect that it has on her. However, she still must deal with this missing element of human nature in her own way. She is different than both Beatty and Montag but similar to many in her society. Mildred shows the reader how the average person copes with living without questioning themselves or their surroundings, as well as showing us the measures introduced overtime to deal with it. For example, when Mildred overdoses on her pills and Montag rushes her to the hospital, she is not visited by doctors but rather “two handymen”. They operate on Mildred, completely indifferent to this routine procedure. They boredly say that they “get these cases nine or ten a night”. Montag is shocked and realizes that in his society, a world where the lack of freedom to questions has also stymied curiosity, creativity, or knowledge, so many people must resort to harmful acts like overdosing that they eventually had to build machines to deal with it. Mildred’s madness is distinct from Beatty’s, as she is less aware of its roots, yet it also inevitably leads to her downfall. She ends up betraying her husband and watches her house being burned down by him. In this way she is extremely representative of their city, country, and general society, which was destroyed in an instant by a war that they had declared just days
Beatty, as the antagonist, is complex character who is contradictory and confusing. As the book progresses the reader …show more content…
As an average member of her society, she is completely unaware that her scope of knowledge is incomplete and therefore does not consciously know about the effect that it has on her. However, she still must deal with this missing element of human nature in her own way. She is different than both Beatty and Montag but similar to many in her society. Mildred shows the reader how the average person copes with living without questioning themselves or their surroundings, as well as showing us the measures introduced overtime to deal with it. For example, when Mildred overdoses on her pills and Montag rushes her to the hospital, she is not visited by doctors but rather “two handymen”. They operate on Mildred, completely indifferent to this routine procedure. They boredly say that they “get these cases nine or ten a night”. Montag is shocked and realizes that in his society, a world where the lack of freedom to questions has also stymied curiosity, creativity, or knowledge, so many people must resort to harmful acts like overdosing that they eventually had to build machines to deal with it. Mildred’s madness is distinct from Beatty’s, as she is less aware of its roots, yet it also inevitably leads to her downfall. She ends up betraying her husband and watches her house being burned down by him. In this way she is extremely representative of their city, country, and general society, which was destroyed in an instant by a war that they had declared just days