Fahrenheit 451 By: Ray Bradbury Ray Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois on August 22, 1920. By 1931 he began writing his own stories. He wrote things such as short-stories, play-writing, screen-writing, poet, novelist, and essayist. He graduated highschool in 1938 and didn't go off to college. His first publication was "Hollerbochen's Dilemma" and was printed in 1938 in a magazine. He made is own fan magazine in 1939 and called it Futuria Fantasia. The first thing he was paid to write was "Pendulum". He went on to write all sorts of things throughout his life and what really boosted his career was "The Martian Chronicles". He now lives in California and still writes and lectures. The setting of Fahrenheit 451 is in the future when the written word is forbidden, probably around the year 2000. Most of the story takes place in Guy Montag's house, the firestation, and around the neighborhood. With it being set in the future there are many new inventions, moving sidewalks, fast subway trains, and automatic firepoles, just to name a few. Guy Montag is the main character, he is one of the fireman who burns the books. Montag is not like all the rest of the firemen, he wants to know what the books are about, what their meaning is. When he would go to a house he had to burn, he would sneak a book out with him, he had a collection of about 20 books. He eventually decides he wants to put and end to the burning of books, so people can be free to read and have their own thoughts, instead of the government telling everyone what is right. Clarisee McClellan was a 17 year old girl, is the girl Montag meets as he is walking home from work on night. She has many questions and things to talk to him about, she tells him about the past when fireman were used to put out fires not start them and how people could read freely. She walks with Montag to work in the mornings and they begin to talk about whatever is on her mind. She is the main reason for Montag wants to find out about books and put an end to the firestations. She dies towards the middle of the book, hit by a car. This is when Montag really gets into putting an end to the burning of books. In the beginning Montag thought nothing of burning the houses in which the books were hidden. On his way home one day he met Clarisee and she changed his thoughts of the burning of books. Montag was married to Mildred and she was one of those people was into all the new technologies and spent her time listening to the seashell thing in her ear, which was a radio type thing, and talking to the people on the walls, which were fake people that would talk with you. She was just a totally different person from Montag. As Montag kept talking to this girl on his ways to work he became more influenced by her thoughts. When he found out that she was hit by a car it made him even more influenced. On one of the fire calls he found himself taking a book, it happened to be the Bible, that night when he got one he just seemed very sick. The next day he called in sick for work, and his captain came to visit him and he new exactly what was wrong with him. He said that there comes a time in most firemen's life when they want to know about the history. The captain tells him about the past and tells him the truth that at one point firemen actually put out fires but they were done away with when fireproof houses were invented. Later that day when the captain was gone, he told his wife that he had hidden about 20 books up in the vent and pulls them out and he shows them to her. She becomes frightened and starts screaming and running because she doesn't want her house to be burnt. He tells her that they must read these and find out what they are all about. They cant seem to understand any of it and his wife gets fed up with it. When Montag just cant seem to understand he remembers of a man he met in the park one day that was an old professor and he had given him is number and address. He gives this man a call and tells about his situation and tells him he wants to come and see him. Montag leaves his house to go see the old professor named Faber. Montag brings along the Bible he found at the house and tells Faber that he wants to make copies of the book. They had talked about ways to put ends to this whole thing, planting books in firestations, in the firemen's homes, or even just burning anything that could get in the way. Before Montag left the house Faber gave Montag a bullet that he was to put in his ear, this was used for talking and listening and could hardly be seen from the outside. He could use this so Faber could help Montag. With this Montag left for the house. When Montag comes back to the house he finds his wife still has friends over. He begins talking about books and all of Mildred's friends become scared and then he pulls out a book of course this makes them go even more crazy. He recites some of the words in the book making a big scene, meanwhile Faber is talking to Montag trough the bullet thing in his ear telling him how stupid of a thing that was and to just play it off tell them its a joke and then burn the book. He eventually does this but they still think he is crazy. When he goes into work that night, he is sitting down in the station doing the normal playing cards and a call comes in. Montag gets in the salamander and they head off to the call, the call happens to be his house. His wife had called in and she was leaving for her friends house. His captain gave him a torch and made him go in and burn the house. When he had burned everything in the house and the house was left in ashes, he came out side and Captain Beaty told him he had to be arrested. Montag standing there with the torch in his hand, and Beaty had now found the bullet in his ear and now had endangered Faber's life realized what he had to do and aimed the torch at Beaty and burned him. Now he had to run, he begun running and started thinking of the hound, right then the hound came around and started heading for Montag, the hound almost bit Montag got him in the leg but before it could insert its lethal injection Montag burned him. It still sent pain through Montag's leg and Montag began limping away through the alley's with the whole police system after him. He went to Faber's house and talked to him about the situation. Faber pulled out a small TV and showed him what the cops were doing, and told him that he needed to get going because they were sending in the mechanical hound and it would only be a matter of time before it tracked him here. Faber told him that he should run to the river and then follow the old rail road tracks and that he would find groups of people there that were old English professors and teachers and people like that. So with that he took of running to the river. When he got to the river he just let the river take him along as far as it could, when he started scrapping the bottom he got out and started to walk down the tracks. After awhile he saw some people sitting around the fire, they called him over to talk. They told him about themselves they were once teachers and also liked reading. Meanwhile throughout the story there had been talks of war and there were always fighter planes flying over. Just before Montag got caught with the whole book thing the war began. When he was sitting around the fire talking to the men, planes flew over and dropped bombs on the city destroying it. Now since the city was all in ruins, they people decided that they could go back to town and hopefully change the way people thought, bring books back into the world, since all the things stopping him had been burnt. With that the book ended and Montag and a crew of people set out to change the world for the better.