Essay About Guy Montag And Wife Mildred Attempts Suicide

Fahrenheit 451
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Guy Montag is a fireman in charge of burning books. A gentle young girl named Clarisse
McClellan opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocently penetrating questions
and peculiar love of people and nature. After his wife Mildred attempts suicide without even
realizing what she is doing, after he witnesses an old woman let herself be burned with her
books, and after he hears that Clarisse has been killed by a speeding car, Montag searches for
solutions to his rising dissatisfaction in a stash of books he has stolen and hidden. He looks to
Mildred for help and support, but she prefers television to her husbands company and cannot
understand why he would want to take the terrible risk of reading books.
Montag remembers an old intellectual named Faber with whom he once talked in the park and
goes to him for help in understanding what he reads. Meanwhile, Beatty, Montags superior, has
guessed that Montag is experimenting with books and hints that he should turn in the book he
stole from the old womans library within 24 hours. Faber explains the value of books to Montag,
which lies in their ability to store and communicate meaningful information, something which
their society now lacks. He agrees to help Montag and gives him a two-way radio which fits into
his ear so that he can hear what Montag hears and talk to him secretly. Montag goes home and
finds two of his wifes friends there. Their superficiality angers him, and he shows them a book of
poetry and reads them one of the poems. Mildred tries to explain this away as standard fireman
procedure for proving to people how useless books are, but the women leave quite disturbed and
upset.
Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of his books to Beatty. Beatty browbeats him
with his impressive knowledge of literature and historical quotations, which he uses to support his
argument that books are dangerous and must be destroyed. An alarm comes through, and they
rush off to Montags own house. Mildred rushes out, and Montag realizes it was she who put in
the alarm. Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself, and when he is done, he places him
under arrest. Beatty continues to berate Montag, who turns the flamethrower on his superior and
proceeds to burn him to ashes. Montag knocks the other firemen unconscious and begins to run,
when the Mechanical Hound, a monstrous machine which Beatty has set to