The hero in Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag. He is a fireman just like his father and grandfather. He realizes in the book that he may have just been chosen as a fireman because of how he looks. He noticed that all the other firemen all have the same physical characteristics. Montag has lived in ignorance all his life until the events in the book. He notices that everybody is brainwashed, and that any opinion that almost anyone has on anything is completely superficial. Montag is the character that goes through the biggest change in the story. He goes from being just as ignorant as everyone else to someone who sees things as they are. He knows that the people are living in the dark, and he wants to change that. He wants to bring books back into everyday society in hope of making people use their brains more and gain an amount of substance to them. He does not get this goal accomplished in the book because he ends up burning his fellow firemen, and he has to run away. Montag does not really accomplish anything in the story. He goes through a change, kills his friends, and runs away. He does not do anything worthwhile that really makes a difference, but in the end he is going to help rebuild the city. During the bulk of the story Montag just seems overwhelmed by everything, and he is under strong influence from both Faber and Beatty. At the end he actually seems like he can live on his own without anyone guiding him or telling him what to do. Montag was struggling through the whole story to find out what his purpose was, and he thought he could find it in books. At the end of the story he finds that reading books was almost his purpose because he is put in charge of remembering a book he has read. Montag’s purpose in life is to remember the book of Ecclesiastes to tell generations to come.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 2003. Print.
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