Fahrenheit 451 Literature Quotes

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2. Beatty quotes literature to prove a point to Montag. By quoting literature he’s showing him he knows a lot about books. He wants him to think “wow, this guy really knows what he’s talking about” and that books really are as useless as everyone says they are. Who wouldn’t believe someone who sounds so smart, they would feel stupid not to agree with them.
The fact that Beatty can quote literature shows that he has read many books in the past, and still doesn’t find them important. He doesn’t order others to burn them because someone is telling him to, he burns books because he believes in it. “Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright, fire is clean,” (pg 60).

4. In the novel, fire is represented as destructive. For example, Montag is
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He starts to feel his personality divide into a conforming and nonconforming individual. “He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other,” (pg 21). Montag begins to see the value in books and decides to take the path of a nonconforming individual.

7. Montag’s wife, Mildred, is a prime example of a F451 character. Her attempted suicide shows that she is in a lot of pain emotionally, and her obsession with television is a way to avoid confronting her problems. She has a better relationship with the family in her soap operas than with her own husband. She doesn’t think for herself and does what everyone else does, and she doesn’t question any of it.
Clarisse is almost the complete opposite of Mildred. Clarisse is an outcast because she likes nature, socializing, and asking questions. She says, “I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this,” (pg 26). She represents someone who is a threat to the stability of their society’s ideas because she thinks for herself and questions

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