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When the two are parting their ways...

Clarisse asks a simple but controversial question:

"Are you happy?"

He responds that he is, but he had never thought about it

Are u happy?

He begins to question himself about his own happiness

He'll later get to the point that his life is meaningless

Montag is called to destroy the books of an unidentified woman

She refuses to leave her house and becomes a sort of martyr for books

suicide

He decides to feign illness

The protagonist feels guilty about her death and this has caused him to question about his job

The Firemen

4. Report back to firehouse immediately.

5. Stand alert for other alarms.

1. Answer the alarm swiftly.

2. Start the fire swiftly.

3. Burn everything.

• They are "censors"
• Task to burn down all houses that contain books that are forbidden by the law
• They have a rulebook which sets out the 5 principal rules

ALIENATED NATURE of firemen, BRAINWASHED, DISTANCED from their HUMAN NATURE

They KEPT THINKING about it

"Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and ten thousand imaginary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes. These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and soot-colored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but their heritage showed. Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever seen a fireman that didn't have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror-images of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities?"

Chosen based on PHYSICAL FEATURES, GLOOMY figures to strike fear

The forbidden books

• The Firemen had the task to burn the books that were forbidden by the law
• The majority of them was forbidden - there were only some abridged versions
• Beatty - apologizer of the government

justifies

they had content that offended the "minorities"

in reality:

"Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book."

A WAY FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO CONTROL THE THOUGHTS OF THE POPULATION

The Mechanical Hound

• It works closely to the firemen
• Engineering marvel: robotic dog with eight legs and a four-inch steel needle that projects from its nose to inject procaine into its victims
• It serves the government

• Task to hunt and kill fugitives - people discovered in possession of books
• It also follows Montag - put on his trial by Beatty

It represents:

-The manipulation of technology from the government for the purpose of fear and destruction - to control everything

-A metaphor of society - set to function in a certain way, no personal thoughts

"It doesn't like or dislike. It just 'functions'"

"The mechanical hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse"

“In her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in. […] There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea.”

• Mildred is Guy Montag's wife and they've been married for ten years

• The author describes her through her husband's opinion on her

• She seems totally detached from reality and prefers to spend her time watching the TV or listening to radio programs

“Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them.”

• The most significant episode in which she's involved is the overdose of sleeping pills

• Guy comes home from work and finds her almost dead in her bed

• He calls two paramedics who clean her blood using a specific machine and explain to him that this type of accident occurs very frequently

• The morning after she seems unaware of this peculiar event

“Why didn't he buy himself an audio-Seashell broadcasting station and talk to his wife late at night, murmur, whisper, shout, scream, yell? But what would he whisper, what would he yell? What could he say?

• Guy begins to feel like (or finally understands that) they're incapable to communicate

• Her unawareness is linked to her education and indoctrination; she was actually taught not to think

• She's totally absorbed by the fiction that her life is and can't concentrates on anything besides TV programs

“What incredible power of identification the girl had; she was like the eager watcher of a marionette show.”

• Clarisse is a seventeen-year-old girl who personifies the counterpart of Mildred

• She's a thinker, is curious about the environment surrounding her and loves to state question

• She introduces herself saying that the vast majority of people see her as a crazy person

• Her conversations with Montag induce him to start questioning his own World and way of living

“-I am very much in love!- He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face. -I am!-”

• Clarisse asks Montag if he actually is in love with someone and to prove the veracity of his positive answer she invites him to rub a yellow flower on his chin; if the color doesn't appear, it means that he's lying.

• The result of this game scares Guy, because he starts to understand and unwritten truth that used to scare him

• He's unhappy with his life and unsatisfied with his power and knowledge

“An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't.”

• In the society of Fahrenheit 451 teenagers, like any other category of people, are forced into a destructive routine of following rules which don't let them express their true self

“They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around […] or go out in the cars and race on the streets.”

• Boys and girls seems to find peace and freedom only into violence

• Clarisse resembles the actual rebel who silently observes the reality through the eyes of an active mind