Kersten Barton Barton 1
Salcido

Pre-AP English 2
16 January 2012 Becoming Your Own In Fahrenheit 45, Ray Bradbury shows how Guy Montag becomes his own person by taking him on an amazing adventure. In this book Bradbury tells you all the struggles Montag goes through to break away from the crazy world he lives in. Montag personally shows he’s weaknesses and his strengths all through out this book. He learns many things along the way and how fast his world is going to change because of one book. Montag listens to the rest of the world about how he shouldn’t read. He is a firemen and all he does is burn books, because that is what he was taught/knows. “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed”(Bradbury 3). Montag is showing how he is doing what someone tells him. He is showing weakness, because he’s not showing his own opinion. He’s following everyone else and what they say to do. One night he is walking home and a young 17 year old girl named Clarisse McClellan. Talks to him about people being afraid of the firemen, she shortly after asks him a question. “Have you ever read any of the books yo burn?”(Bradbury 8). He answers her saying its against the law. That night after she left and he went to his house. He found his wife trying to commit suicide. Montag calls the Emergency Hospital. Two men with two machines come to his house. “ The machine pumped all the blood from the body and replaced it with fresh blood and serum”(Bradbury 15). This incident shows how weird and different the world Montag lives in. Montag the next morning starts to ask Mildred his wife about last night. She doesn’t remember a thing, she thinks that they throw a party and passed out. Mildred complete ignores Montag when he’s trying to talk to her. Mildred went to their TV parlor and was reading a script with the “family”. Montag asked her “What’s on this afternoon?”(Bradbury 20). She didn’t look up from her script. She starts telling him about her part and how she’s a homemaker. She starts talking about how “It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed”(Bradbury 20). Montag tells her “[it’s] one third of my yearly pay”(Bradbury 20). Mildred doesn’t really care and still wants the wall-TV. The way Mildred acts shows how disconnected the world is. She doesn’t really pay attention or notice Montag. One night why Montag was working someone called about a women that had books. The police usually got everyone out of the house before the firemen got their. But not that night, they fought with the women. “Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief. Now it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty”(Bradbury 37&38). This is showing how Montag is going to start breaking away from everyone else and becoming his own person with his own thought. Montag didn’t know what to do with the book. So when he got home that night “he stumbled toward the bed and shoved the book clumsily under the cold pillow”(Bradbury 41). Mildred didn’t know about the book. Later in the night he looked over at Mildred and she was still awake “there was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again, and she was listening to far people in far places”(Bradbury 42). Montag tried talking to her but Mildred couldn’t hear him, because of the seashells. One day Captain Beatty came to Montag’s house. Beatty starts to tell him how every firemen comes to the point were they want to know the history of the firemen. Beatty tells Montag about the McClellan’s and how the firemen watched them, because they were different from everyone else in the town. Beatty starts to say “at least