Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 - Character Guide

Fahrenheit 451 (binary/octet-stream)

Fahrenheit 451 - Characters

Guy Montag 451 (binary/octet-stream)

Guy Montag

In a distant future America, the role of fireman has changed from preserver to destroyer. Guy Montag, at the beginning of the novel, is a pyromaniacal burner of books. He is happy in his work, because he has never questioned it.  Only after he meets his young neighbour Clarisse, does Guy begin to doubt the society he inhabits and his role within it. As his eyes are slowly opened, he begins to see the deep malaise brought about by modern life. He watches a lady self immolate and his own wife overdose. Risking everything, he steals and begins to read the books he is meant to destroy. By the end of the novel, Montag has successfully replaced one type of enlightenment with another. 

Clarisse Mc Clennan (binary/octet-stream)

Clarisse McClellan

Clarisse represents an atypical worldview from the one Montag has been raised to believe. Unlike her peers, Clarisse and her family believe in conversation and exposing themselves to new topics of interest.  The antithetical nature of her beliefs are symbolised by her association with water - 'The rain feels good, I love to walk in it'. She exposes Guy to to this anti-fire, which begins his later transformation. Clarisse, we learn, is tragically killed by a speeding driver. Her death is strange, denied significance by the nonchalant recall of Mildred Montag, some days after the event.  Clarisse become just another statistic in a world that has long ceased to treasure beauty or innocence. 

Captain Beatty (binary/octet-stream)

Captain Beatty

Captain Beatty is Guy's commanding officer. In the text, he serves as a historian for the reader as well as an apologist for the state. He is the principal antagonist and the epitome of the fire symbol (destruction) within the text. Ultimately he dies from the very flame he cherishes.  Beatty is a contradiction in that he has the air of a well-read man and, at one point, tells Montag that intellectual curiousity is a natural part of being a fireman, indeed that all firemen become attracted to books at some point in their career.  Beatty's compassion for Guy's predicament is short-lived, however, as Beatty sets 'The Mechanical Hound' on his colleague, More sinister is the suggestion that Beatty may have been responsible for Clarisse's death - 'Queer ones like her...We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early.'

M Montag (binary/octet-stream)

Mildred Montag

Mildred is the symbol of everything wrong with the world of 451.  Her happiness is as artificial as her family, which exists only within the 'Parlor Wall' entertainment system of the house. Millie is selfish and unconcerned for others as demonstrated by both her casual report of Clarisse's death, and her reluctance to help her husband through his own crises. Mildred's suicide attempt/overdose informs the reader that she is not alone in her depression. The medical techs who turn up to pump her stomach and change her blood do so with little care or compassion. They are jaded by the many similar cases they attend to every night.

Professor Faber

Professor Faber 451 (binary/octet-stream)

Professor Faber plays, symbolically, several roles within Fahrenheit 451. He is the Jungian archetype of the 'Wise Old Man', a repository of knowledge and wisdom who becomes Montag's guide to his new world of learning. He is also the antithesis of Beatty in that he represents objective knowledge, rather than the subjective dogma given by the captain. This is never more apparent than in the scene where Montag confronts Beatty with the two-way radio in his ear. In this, Faber  plays both conscience and angel whispering to counteract the fiery, demonic arguments of Beatty. 

Granger 451 (binary/octet-stream)

Granger

Granger represents a return to traditional ways of learning. Through the campfire recitations of books committed to memory, Granger brings his own dimension to the pheonix symbolism earlier seen on the fireman's uniform. This is literature at its inception, in the same way that the Iliad sprang fully formed from a tradition of story-telling. Granger and his disciples keep stories in the place where they cannot be discovered and the place where they matter most - in the mind. In contrast to the technological destructiveness of Beatty's Mechanical Hound, Granger employs naturalistic methods of salvation, such as the Bobcat scent he uses to camouflage Montag.