Beatty is the chief at the firehouse. Fahrenheit 451 describes a country caught in the grip of both an external war with another power, and a civil war between city dwellers and ragtag anarchists (McNamee). The main character in the book is Guy Montag. His job is to be a fireman, and he has to burn books as they are discovered hidden in people’s homes (Zacharias). It is a crime to own books in this community. The government uses fire departments to enforce this ban (Lenhoff). The firemen in this futuristic society aren’t the same as ours today; instead of putting out fires, they set books on fire.
All of the buildings are “ fireproofed”; the structure itself can’t catch on fire but the contents of the house, including books, will all burn. No one in the community has ever really questioned about why they can’t read books, and why they are burned until Montag met Clarisse. She is the one who introduced Montag to the world’s potential for beauty and meaning (Sparknotes Editors) and makes him begin to doubt his society’s high-speed, hedonistic way of life (Greenberg). Clarisse is an imaginative young girl who tells Montag about books and history (Bradbury).
Her thinking and questioning is a threat to the state (Kerner). Clarisse is the catalyst through which Guy begins to evaluate his life and career, and finally the society he supports (Kerner). Clarisse shares her values with him until the McClellans mysteriously disappear. Guy Montag’s wife, Mildred, is a completely dependent woman. She is always on her wall-sized television screens (Zacharias). Her zombielike addiction to television and pills make her the personification of this society (Kerner). Her two friends are Mrs. Phelps and Mrs.
Bowles. Mrs. Phelps is a childless, superficial woman who is happy because she lets her husband do all the worrying (Brown). Mrs. Bowles is selfish, shallow, and has had three disappointing marriages, twelve abortions, and two caesarean sections (Brown). Both of Mildred’s friends are unhappy, and that reflects onto Mildred. As Montag’s dissatisfaction increases, he seeks out to find Faber for support (Greenberg). Professor Faber is a retired English professor whom Montag encountered a year before the book opens (Sparknotes Editor).
Faber is another person who has read books before. Montag learns that Faber is now secretly reading books, and has not gotten caught. Faber has helped Montag hide his own books. Eventually, Faber helps Montag escape the Mechanical Hounds (Brown). Mechanical hounds are insidious creatures that are programmed by the firemen to track down and kill fugitives. Fahrenheit 451 is split up into three different sections. It begins with “ The Hearth and the Salamander,” then the middle one is “ The Sieve and the Sand,” and lastly it is ends with “ Burning Bright. Each section represents a symbol that is connected to Bradbury’s novel. “ The Hearth and the Salamander” focuses on Montag’s job as a fireman and his home life (Sparknotes Editors). In this section, it presents a series of discoveries that lead Montag to steal and read from books (Heller). The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional symbol of the home (Sparknotes Editors). The salamander is one of the official symbols of the firemen (Sparknotes Editors).
Firemen also name their fire trucks after the salamander (Sparknotes Editors). Both of these symbols involve fire which is a big part of Montag’s life. The hearth contains the fire that heats his home and the salamander because they believed that salamanders live in fire and are unable to burn. “ The Sieve and the Sand,” comes from Montag’s childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task (Sparknotes Editors).
Montag compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory (Sparknotes Editors). The sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag seeks, and the sieve is a symbol of the human mind seeking a truth that remains elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way (Sparknotes Editors).
