Guy Montag

Guy Montag is the central character in Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451. He makes his living as a fireman, who burns books in order to repress free thought.

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At the beginning of the novel, he is happily employed as a fireman, burning all books and not questioning anything about his role as a tool of thought suppression. However, several events cause him to question his existence: First, he meets an old man in the park, who is later identified as Faber. After talking with him, Montag begins hiding books in his house. Second, he meets 17-year-old Clarisse McClellan while walking home from his work. He talks with her and is amazed at how she's different from the hedonistic materialist society everyone lives in. Third, he has a call to go to a house owned by an old lady, who rather than be led out of the house before it is burned, decides to set the fire herself, and burn alive inside the house. His wife, Mildred is meanwhile being fed on the mass-produced entertainment and soap operas, and reacts badly to her husbands desire to read books. After an incident where he tries to read to his wife's friends when they are over, she calls in and denounces them, and disappears from the novel. Montag's fire chief, Beatty tries to persuade him that books are evil, and urges him to return to the unthinking fireman mentality, but Montag refuses, and sets him and the whole house on fire. He runs as a fugitive to Faber, pursued by a Mechanical Hound, a robot with the intent of killing him. Escaping into the river, he joins the book people outside the city. They memorize books, with the intent of having them written down one day when the world has come to its senses. They finish the book heading north, while jet bombers scream overhead.

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Ray Bradbury: Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, science fiction, and mystery writer known best for his 1950 short story collection The Martian Chronicles and his 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451....

1953: 1953 is a common year starting on Thursday....

Fahrenheit 451: Fahrenheit 451 (1953) is a dystopian fiction novel by Ray Bradbury that was originally published as a shorter novella in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction....

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