The Classical Hero's Journey of Guy Montag in the Novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel set in a future where books are outlawed and any that are found are burned by firemen. Guy Montag, one of these firemen, meets a seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan who causes him to question society and become increasingly dissatisfied with his life. This drives him to steal books, leading him on a classic hero’s journey which ends in hope of a rebuilt, more meaningful civilization.

Montag’s call to adventure is when Clarisse asks Montag if he is happy with his life. He likens her to a mirror with her “incredible powers of identification.” (11). Clarisse makes him nervous, because she is the first person who really makes him think about things, and his feelings towards her are uncertain. She fascinates him, however, and he becomes accustomed to talking to her everyday until she is run over by a speeding car. After he responds to an alarm where an old woman sets herself on fire alongside her books, he begins to question himself and the society around him. He tries to talk to his wife Mildred about this, saying “…I suddenly realized I didn’t like them at all, and I didn’t like myself at all anymore. And I thought maybe it would be best if the firemen themselves were burnt.” (67). It is at this point that his blind faith in the firemen is shattered, and he finally realizes the person society has forced him to be isn’t someone he is happy being.

The threshold crossing in Fahrenheit 451 is when Montag visits Faber and demands that he help him understand what he reads. Faber agrees, and they come up with a plan to reprint books. Faber gives Montag a two-way radio earpiece, and after Montag returns home, he takes out a book of poetry and reads “Dover Beach” to Mildred and her friends. Montag and Faber’s plan, as well as Montag’s decision to read the poetry and put himself in danger, show his acceptance of the call and his commitment to enter the unknown.

Montag’s abyss is his final confrontation with Beatty. After Mildred betrays him and Montag is forced to burn down his own house, Beatty then places him under arrest and taunts him until Montag turns his flamethrower on Beatty and burns him to death. Montag is attacked by the mechanical hound as he flees the scene, and collapses in an alley crying as he realizes that Beatty wanted to die. Even though Montag managed to triumph over Beatty and evade capture by the police, he feels even more lost than he was before.

As Montag floats down the river after escaping from the hound, he begins to reflect, thinking: “The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!” (p. 140). This exemplifies the wisdom Montag gains over the course of the novel; that life is made of both constructive and destructive cycles. With this knowledge, Montag and the group of wandering professors can help rebuild civilization from the ashes of the destroyed city, as well as lead meaningful, important lives.

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