Character Analysis and Novel Themes

Who are the main characters in 451 and how do they represent and display the prevalent themes and components of the novel?

__________________
Main Characters
__________________

Guy Montag
__________

Appropriately named after a paper-manufacturing company, Montag is the protagonist of Fahrenheit 451. He is by no means a perfect hero, however. The reader can sympathize with Montags mission, but the steps he takes toward his goal often seem clumsy and misguided. Montags faith in his profession and his society begins to decline almost immediately after the novels opening passage. Faced with the enormity and complexity of books for the first time, he is often confused, frustrated, and overwhelmed. As a result, he has difficulty deciding what to do independently of Beatty, Mildred, or Faber. Likewise, he is often rash, inarticulate, self-obsessed, and too easily swayed. At times he is not even aware of why he does things, feeling that his hands are acting by themselves. These subconscious actions can be quite horrific, such as when he finds himself setting his supervisor on fire, but they also represent his deepest desires to rebel against the status quo and find a meaningful way to live. Clarisse, to the grotesque and irresponsible, as in his murder of Beatty and his half-baked scheme to overthrow the firemen.

Mildred Montag
______________

Mildred is the one major character in the book who seems to have no hope of resolving the conflicts within herself. Her suicide attempt suggests that she is in great pain and that her obsession with television is a means to avoid confronting her life. But her true feelings are buried very deep within her. She even appears to be unaware of her own suicide attempt. She is a frightening character, because the reader would expect to know the protagonists wife very intimately, but she is completely cold, distant, and unreadable. Her betrayal of Montag is far more severe than Beattys, since she is, after all, his wife. Bradbury portrays Mildred as a shell of a human being, devoid of any sincere emotional, intellectual, or spiritual substance. Her only attachment is to the family in the soap opera she watches.

Captain Beatty
______________

Beatty is a complex character, full of contradictions. He is a book burner with a vast knowledge of literature, someone who obviously cared passionately about books at some point. It is important to note that Beattys entire speech to Montag describing the history of the firemen is strangely ambivalent, containing tones of irony, sarcasm, passion, and regret, all at once. Beatty calls books treacherous weapons, yet he uses his own book learning to manipulate Montag mercilessly.
In one of his most sympathetic moments, Beatty says hes tried to understand the universe and knows firsthand its melancholy tendency to make people feel bestial and lonely. He is quick to stress that he prefers his life of instant pleasure, but it is easy to get the impression that his vehemence serves to deny his true feelings. His role as a character is complicated by the fact that Bradbury uses him to do so much explication of the novels background. In his shrewd observations of the world around him and his lack of any attempt to prevent his own death, he becomes too sympathetic to function as a pure villain.

Professor Faber
_______________

Named after a famous publisher, Faber competes with Beatty in the struggle for Montags mind. His control over Montag may not be as complete and menacing as Beattys, but he does manipulate Montag via his two-way radio to accomplish the things his cowardice has prevented him from doing himself, acting as the brain directing Montags body. Fabers role and motivations are complex: at times he tries to help Montag think independently and at other times he tries to dominate him. Similarly, he can be cowardly and heroic by turns. Neither Faber nor Beatty can articulate his beliefs in a completely convincing way, despite the fact that their pupil is naive and credulous.

_____________________________
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs
_____________________________
______
Themes
______

Censorship
__________

Fahrenheit 451 doesnt provide a single, clear explanation of why books are banned in the future. Instead, it suggests that many different factors could combine to create this result. These factors can be broken into two groups: factors that lead to a general lack of interest in reading and factors that make people actively hostile toward books. The novel doesnt clearly distinguish these two developments. Apparently, they simply support one another
The first group of factors includes the popularity of competing forms of entertainment such as television and radio. More broadly, Bradbury thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud music, and advertisements creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation in which no one has the time to concentrate. Also, the huge mass of published material is too overwhelming to think about, leading to a society that reads condensed books (which were very popular at the time Bradbury was writing) rather than the real thing.
The second group of factors, those that make people hostile toward books, involves envy. People dont like to feel inferior to those who have read more than they have. But the novel implies that the most important factor leading to censorship is the objections of special-interest groups and minorities to things in books that offend them. Bradbury is careful to refrain from referring specifically to racial minoritiesBeatty mentions dog lovers and cat lovers, for instance. The reader can only try to infer which special-interest groups he really has in mind. As the Afterword to Fahrenheit 451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempts to restrict his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to letters he has received suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters. He sees such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerantas the first step on the road to book burning.

Knowledge versus Ignorance
__________________________

Montag, Faber, and Beattys struggle revolves around the tension between knowledge and ignorance. The firemans duty is to destroy knowledge and promote ignorance in order to equalize the population and promote sameness. Montags encounters with Clarisse, the old woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach. His resultant search for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance he used to share with nearly everyone else, and he battles the basic beliefs of his society.
______
Motifs
______

Paradoxes
_________

In the beginning of The Hearth and the Salamander, Montags bedroom is described first as not empty and then as indeed empty, because Mildred is physically there, but her thoughts and feelings are elsewhere. Bradburys repeated use of such paradoxical statementsespecially that a character or thing is dead and alive or there and not thereis frequently applied to Mildred, suggesting her empty, half-alive condition. Bradbury also uses these paradoxical statements to describe the Electric-Eyed Snake stomach pump and, later, the Mechanical Hound. These paradoxes question the reality of beings that are apparently living but spiritually dead. Ultimately, Mildred and the rest of her society seem to be not much more than machines, thinking only what they are told to think. The culture of Fahrenheit 451 is a culture of insubstantiality and unreality, and Montag desperately seeks more substantial truths in the books he hoards.

Animal and Nature Imagery
_________________________

Animal and nature imagery pervades the novel. Nature is presented as a force of innocence and truth, beginning with Clarisses adolescent, reverent love for nature. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and the experience changes him irrevocably. His escape from the city into the country is a revelation to him, showing him the enlightening power of unspoiled nature. Much of the novels animal imagery is ironic. Although this society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature, many frightening mechanical devices are modeled after or named for animals, such as the Electric-Eyed Snake machine and the Mechanical Hound.

Religion
________

Fahrenheit 451 contains a number of religious references. Mildreds friends remind Montag of icons he once saw in a church and did not understand. The language Bradbury uses to describe the enameled, painted features of the artifacts Montag saw is similar to the language he uses to describe the firemens permanent smiles. Faber invokes the Christian value of forgiveness: after Montag turns against society, Faber reminds him that since he was once one of the faithful, he should demonstrate pity rather than fury. The narrative also contains references to the miracle at Canaa, where Christ transformed water into wine. Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine. In the biblical story, Jesus Christs transformation of water into wine was one of the miracles that proved his identity and instilled faith in his role as the savior. Montag longs to confirm his own identity through a similar self-transformation.
The references to fire are more complex. In the Christian tradition, fire has several meanings: from the pagan blaze in which the golden calf was made to Moses burning bush, it symbolizes both blatant heresy and divine presence. Fire in Fahrenheit 451 also possesses contradictory meanings. At the beginning it is the vehicle of a restrictive society, but Montag turns it upon his oppressor, using it to burn Beatty and win his freedom.
Finally, Bradbury uses language and imagery from the Bible to resolve the novel. In the last pages, as Montag and Grangers group walk upriver to find survivors after the bombing of the city, Montag knows they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember appropriate passages from the Bible. He brings to mind Ecclesiastes 3:1, To everything there is a season, and also Revelations 22:2, And on either side of the river was there a tree of life . . . and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations, which he decides to save for when they reach the city. The verse from Revelations also speaks of the holy city of God, and the last line of the book, When we reach the city, implies a strong symbolic connection between the atomic holocaust of Montags world and the Apocalypse of the Bible.
_______
Symbols
_______

Blood
_____

Blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of a human beings repressed soul or primal, instinctive self. Montag often feels his most revolutionary thoughts welling and circulating in his blood. Mildred, whose primal self has been irretrievably lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine. The symbol of blood is intimately related to the Snake machine. Bradbury uses the electronic device to reveal Mildreds corrupted insides and the thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her. The Snake has explored the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water, but its replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her.

The Hearth and the Salamander
_____________________________

Bradbury uses this conjunction of images as the title of the first part of Fahrenheit 451. The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional symbol of the home; the salamander is one of the official symbols of the firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks. Both of these symbols have to do with fire, the dominant image of Montags lifethe hearth because it contains the fire that heats a home, and the salamander because of ancient beliefs that it lives in fire and is unaffected by flames.

The Sieve and the Sand
______________________

The title of the second part of Fahrenheit 451, The Sieve and the Sand, is taken from Montags childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task. He compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory.
Simply put, the sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag seeks, and the sieve the human mind seeking a truth that remains elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way.

The Phoenix
___________

After the bombing of the city, Granger compares mankind to a phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over and over again. Mans advantage is his ability to recognize when he has made a mistake, so that eventually he will learn not to make that mistake anymore. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of culture and history. The symbol of the phoenixs rebirth refers not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montags spiritual resurrection.

Mirrors
_______

At the very end of the novel, Granger says they must build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark recalls Montags description of Clarisse as a mirror in The Hearth and the Salamander. Mirrors here are symbols of self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.