“So it was the hand that started it
all” (38). Montag allows his thoughts to flow freely through his mind: the
books, Captain Beatty, the woman, and her last words. As he lays in bed,
hearing his wife’s miniscule humming to the melody of her seashell radio, he
begins to contemplate him and his wife’s relationship. In Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag lives in a futuristic, utopian society
where reading is a felony, as are many other common amenities we take for
granted. In this backward society, firemen don’t save people’s lives and homes,
but rather burn books and destroy their homes. As a fellow fireman, Guy Montag
participates in book burning and doesn’t question it until he meets Clarisse
Mclellan, the seventeen-year-old “divergent”. Guy Montag allows himself to be
manipulated. His lack of realization and understanding allows others’ thoughts
of revolution to penetrate his mind and make him believe that they are his.
