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Gavin Piscitelli

Mrs. Cramer

College Comp 1 Period 6

15 November 2019

The Fiery Characters from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451

The novel Fahrenheit 451 is just a book about fire, right? However, it isn’t just about

fire, it's about so much more. Ray Bradbury, the author of the novel, not only adds scintillating

literary elements or fantastic symbolism, but what is most impressive is the way he utilizes his

characters and how well he is at. From the main character Guy Montag, to Capitan Beatty, to

even Mrs. Phelps, Bradbury has a distinct way to making them all believable and non-believable.

Bradbury even adds some unwanted scenarios for main character in Guy Montag to try and bring

out the sympathetic side of the readers. Lastly, Bradbury does a phenomenal job throughout the

novel in the development of the character traits. What makes it even better is when he makes the

reader have to work and find those traits, because Bradbury wants the reader to sustain his goal

of the novel. That goal is for the reader to stay engaged and Bradbury executed that goal to the

maximum of his ability. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 gives the reader ideas to ponder

including the sympathetic nature of Guy Montag, the development of character traits, and the

believability of them.

As soon as the reader flips open the cover of the novel, they encounter the character of

Guy Montag. Instead of getting a boring, basic first chapter, the reader is immediately engaged

due to a tragedy, which being is a woman who is fighting for every breath after an overdose.

(Bradbury 13). That woman is Mildred Montag. Mildred is the wife of Guy Montag and she is a
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victim of an overdose. The reader immediately feels sadness because of the situation that has

occurred. Not only do they feel bad for Mildred, but also for Montag. Now someone might ask,

“why would you feel bad for Montag?” The answer to that question is it is hard sometimes to

deal with grief. When a family loses a beloved member, there is obviously some sympathy. Well

in this case, Guy Montag is on the verge of losing the person he married, so he is obviously upset

and there is sympathy to be shared. Thankfully for Montag, Mildred did survive, and he did not

need to worry anymore. As the plot continues to grow, Montag became more and more curious

about books which in the novel books are meant to be destroyed. Montag kept thinking more

about these books and what was inside them. He then takes a book home and gets caught. This

little thought he ended up having turned his life around. Montag was now a fugitive, Mildred left

him, and he had nowhere to go. (Bradbury 117). The reader then starts to sympathize with him,

again. Sure, Montag did do something wrong, but it is almost like a situation with a puppy. The

puppy does something wrong and it gets yelled at, well the person that yelled at it then feels bad.

It is the same scenario here. It almost seems as if Montag’s life is over. Bradbury does a good job

to make the reader sympathize with Montag, as seen above.

Bradbury also makes the reader ponder the traits of the characters throughout the novel.

The first trait that comes to mind when describing Guy Montag is, he is a curious person.

Montag is always questioning something. He is super fascinated in books, which are illegal to

have in the novel. Montag stated within the novel the following statement of curiosity which is,

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a

burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” (Bradbury 51). This

statement occurred after he was informed to burn down a house with books, with an old lady in

the home. This is a perfect example of the curiosity Montag possesses. Another person within the
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novel who can be described as curious can be Montag’s neighbor, Clarisse McClellan. But her

best trait is being calm. Towards the beginning of the novel, Montag has a normal conversation

with Clarisse, who is an intelligent and non-timid person. (Bradbury 6). She was able to maintain

a conversation, along with having a few other with Montag as the novel progressed. Again,

Bradbury does a wonderful job developing the character traits of not only Montag and Clarisse,

but all the characters throughout the novel.

Lastly, Bradbury did his best job with this subtopic, which is the believability of the

characters within the novel. The reason on why this is his best work within the topic of the

characters is that he not only shows that the characters are believable but also non-believable.

The reason the characters are believable is because they do common human thinking. An

example of this is Montag stating, “And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized

that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a

long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before.”

(Bradbury 51). He then makes them non-believable by saying Montag torched Beatty. (Bradbury

119). Now that sounds like it came out of a Call of Duty video game, so therefore it doesn’t

sound believable. However, like stated before this is Bradbury’s best works within the novel.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 gives the reader ideas to ponder including the

sympathetic nature of Guy Montag, the development of character traits, and the believability of

them. Bradbury did a phenomenal job meeting all three of those subtopics within the broader

topic of characters. Bradbury met his goal of keeping the reader engaged throughout the novel

and did it in a phenomenal. In conclusion, those were some hot takes on the fiery characters from

Fahrenheit 451.
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Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York City:

Ballantine Books, 1982.