Fahrenheit 451 takes us to a world where books are burned, ideas are feared, and firemen make fires. This powerful drama tells the story of the protagonist Guy Montag. In Montag’s world, firemen start fires rather than putting them out. IN a society not too far distant from our own, the people want to be told how to feel, what to do, what truths to believe. They do not spend time enjoying nature, being by themselves, thinking independently, or involving themselves in meaningful conversations. Instead, they live in the moment, get all their information from the television, drive very fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen to the voices of the government on “Seashell Radio” sets attached to their ears.
Fireman Guy Montag enjoys his job of setting illegally-owned books and the homes of their owners on fire. Montag encounters a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocently penetrating questions and her unusual love of people and nature and a curiosity for information and facts. Montag’s life crisis really begins when he and his fellow firemen see an old woman burn herself to death with her beloved books. Her willingness to die for her books convinces Montag that there must be more to books than he has been brought up to believe. Controlled and bullied by his Fire Chief Captain Beaty Montag begins to have an intense personal struggle about these books and what they might contain that is so dangerous. Montag hatches a plan to destroy the system from within by planting books in every fireman’s house. He is discovered by Beaty and must make a run for it before he is killed as a traitor. In his flight to safety he leaves the city and finds himself in the a remote community where people have become the books by memorising them.
