The Role Of Struggle And Suffering In Fahrenheit 451

Improved Essays
Helen Keller once believed that “The struggle of life is one of our greatest blessings. It makes us patient, sensitive, and Godlike. It teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” This is important to know, because the struggle for freedom will lead you to wisdom and progress. Struggle and suffering can lead to wisdom and progress due to learning from your mistakes and realizing that you made a mistake in the first place.

First, individuals can see that struggle and suffering can lead to wisdom and progress, due to the fact that some things are worth fighting or dying for. As Ray Bradbury states in Fahrenheit 451, when the old lady was about to be burned along with the books she had, “Beatty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene. He was too late. Montag gasped. The woman on
…show more content…
As an illustration, when Mildred realized she was about to be crushed while wasting her time watching the parlor walls one last time, “Montag heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left, she saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her”(Bradbury 152). This means that Mildred realized that after all of the events she went through, she was never happy to begin with, and she only believed she was happy because she watched the parlor walls and thought the people inside were her family, when it reality, it wasn’t. As a result of this, Mildred learns that she wasted her life away by doing pointless things like watching T.V or talking about T.V to her friends and other things as

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Persevere to Overcome Whether people can control it or not everyday individuals are faced with difficulties and misfortune events that they must deal with. The method used to conduct oneself in such a situation could differ. They could cave in and continue on their unjust ways or they could react bravely and fight to overcome such difficulties. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a MockingBird Atticus Finch exhibits maybe the most effective way of dealing with adversity.…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poet, Elizabeth Bishop exemplifies this in one of her more revolutionary poems, “The Fish” “I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed, the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare. It was more like the tipping of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face,”(Bishop). “The Fish” is the perfect example of how overcoming adversity determines your success.…

    • 658 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “We believe in ordinary acts of bravery and courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” This quote by Ray Bradbury sums up all the protagonists in this essay. Montag in Fahrenheit 451, Tris in Divergent and Matthis in Among the Enemy all showed tremendous acts of bravery and courage. In all of these dystopias the ideology is to that the government controls everything,the people have no say. In Fahrenheit 451 the society is run in a dictatorship.…

    • 1111 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a dystopian novel that takes the reader on a journey through a future world where books are illegal. The novel outlines the fact that books are important to civilization in many ways, whether it be content, characters, themes, or any important historical foundation that books contain. At the end of the book, the main character, Guy Montag, grabs a few books to save from the firemen, and finds himself amongst a group of homeless book lovers who each have books, or portions of books, memorized where they are safe from the hands of firemen and the government. With the idea of being in Montag’s place and having a choice of which books I would save, I would have chosen The Color Purple, The Wind in the Willows, and The Life of Pi, each for their own unique qualities that would be valuable for future civilizations for historical reference. Rich with gender and racial history, The Color Purple by Alice Walker exemplifies what life was like in the early 1900s for southern African American women.…

    • 776 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Adversity is a basic part of humanity. Without adversity there would never be progress, however, it can be excruciatingly painful. So how-if it is so painful-could this led to progress and relief? Adversity is conflict, it is struggle, and once struggle occurs, the problem can be noticed. This is shown to be true by Barbara Kingsolver in The Bean Trees, Desiderius Erasmus in In Praise of Folly, and Dave Philipps in “Second Judge Blocks Trump’s Transgender Ban in the Military”.…

    • 1478 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    A person who would walk over the hole without grabbing the pole until they are almost to the ground is a careless but also, brave person. The person won't have any physical fear which caused to them to walk without being scared and have confidences in themselves. Guy Montag grew up in a society that was shelter from fears and secrets that was burned by fire. He knows that his job was to set books on fire and that's all he knows, which caused him to become careless and fearless about the dangers in the world. He may enjoy the rush from falling although he seems emotionless because of how he grew up in this certain society, the shelter him from…

    • 122 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Events In Fahrenheit 451

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The events in Fahrenheit 451 take place in a futuristic society where a fireman named Guy Montag, questions what he has been told his entire life. In the novel, Montag’s job is to start fires and burn books that are discovered in people’s homes. Books are banned, since they contain vast amounts of knowledge, so the people are not allowed to think for themselves. This makes Montag curious to why people have these books, so he started a collection of his own which is illegal. His wife, Mildred Montag is an example of people who don’t think for themselves.…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Individuality Individuality. Look at the person sitting right next to you, is your style the same? Would you want to live in a world where no one pursues knowledge or thinks differently? Well, this is how the community was for Montag in the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury wanted to created the opposite of a good society within this book, a dystopian society.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Humanity is undeniably flawed. Factors like envy and selfishness control our society. People naturally feel envious when they compare themselves to others and get the impression that they are inferior. Humanity has always felt the desire to obtain and keep superiority over others. In order to procure an advantage over others, people have selfishly hurt those they feel threatened by, even if the victims are virtuous and innocent.…

    • 235 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Under the Bill of Rights in the United States constitution, Americans are granted the freedoms of religion, assembly, and in relevance to Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the rights to free speech and the sharing of information via the press. Bradbury’s science fiction novel takes place in a futuristic dystopian America where all forms of literature are deemed illegal by the government. To uphold the book ban are firemen, whose job it is to start fires rather than putting them out in the traditional sense. Guy Montag, the novels central character, is one of these firemen. Early in the novel, Montag meets a young, free-spirited girl named Clarisse, who gets Montag to begin questioning the very system he is a part of.…

    • 1333 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In spite of the melancholic dystopian society in which the events of the novel Fahrenheit 451 unfold, Bradbury utilizes the character Granger in order to manifest a hopeful sentiment despite the utter destruction of society. Montag appears to be in a state of disarray when Granger reminds him of the necessity to leave behind a legacy in order to aid the reconstruction of what once was (a passive society with purpose to live) and to not reminisce on the past and what has been altered. Additionally, Granger carries the trait of patience which allows for his followers and Montag to realize the importance of avoiding rushed judgements; in effect, patience is required to prevent society from spiralling downwards once more. Thematically, Granger…

    • 138 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    13 year old Triss Crescent wakes feeling sick. Her parents, Piers and Celeste, tell her that she had gone out last night and come back sopping wet. They think she may have fallen into the nearby lake known as The Grimmer. Though her parents continue to press her, she can’t seem to remember how she fell in or got out. While she can remember bits and pieces from her childhood, these memories, her home, and her family still feel strangely alien.…

    • 592 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The setting of the novel, Fahrenheit 451,by Ray Bradbury, is set in 2053 in a large nameless U.S. city. The place for this setting is not given directly from the author. The time of the book is during a time where they aren’t allowed to have books, which leaves them without knowledge. The mood of the book is sad and curiosity. The author is trying to make you feel how the characters are feeling.…

    • 879 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    After Mildred remembers to tell Montag about Clarisse’s disappearance, Montag pays closer attention to Mildred which shows her bland life style, “her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon” (45). The words used paints an unpleasant image as Mildred is described as a corpse with her “flesh like white bacon”. Montag’s description of Mildred shows society’s demand for artificially beautiful women which can be achieved through dying one’s hair with “chemicals” and “dieting”. With Mildred following society’s orders it highlights her adherence to rules even though it is molding her into the ideology of their society … Clarisse and Mildred’s differences are highlighted through the way they spend their time alone which influences Montag. While Clarisse refuses to comply with the ideologies forced upon her, contrastingly, Mildred lives a monotonous lifestyle, adhering to the standard of society.…

    • 1561 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Even when trapped and imprisoned, be this figuratively or literally, human beings have a tendency to assert their freedom. In a dystopian society, where freedom of decision is stifled, this rings especially true. Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury, sticks true to this fact of human nature. Guy Montag, a firefighter, is the main example of this fact. Starting on the track to his rebellion, Montag begins to steal books from the homes he burns, reading them illegally in his own home.…

    • 1966 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays