Fahrenheit 451 theme handout

Bell 2 Hayden Cobb, Mohammed Abouelsaad ,Noah Trenaman, Rose Bruns and Avery Wilson

Theme statement: Engaging with difficult and uncomfortable thoughts and experiences is the only route to true happiness.

Timeline

• Montag talking to Clarisse and realizing that society is not perfect. He tells her that life was a lot different in the past.
• Mildred’s attempted suicide. Montag never thought of Mildred as depressed. Their relationship isn’t very authentic.
• The second time Montag and Clarisse meet up, she makes the comment that his laugh seems more genuine.
• Montag burning the old woman’s house down. For the first time, he actually feels bad for someone whose house he burned down.
• Montag’s stash of books was uncovered, and now he has to burn his own house down. He’s under arrest.
• Montag killed Beatty. Beatty basically committed suicide when he faced Montag.
• After escaping the police, montag has exited the city and finally finds happiness by experiencing nature, finding the book people, and deciding on a new goal for his life: to preserve knowledge instead of destroying it.

Textual examples of theme development:

“‘Are you happy?’ she said…. Happy! Of all the nonsense… He was not happy” (Bradbury 7-8)

”We have everything we need to be happy, but we arent happy. Something’s missing… I thought books might help”. (Bradbury 78)

“We’re going to build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.” (Bradbury 158)

Why the theme is important to the understanding of our story:

This theme is important because it shows the issues of the society that Montag lives in. People are so inattentive of the world and of their own feelings, and are able to avoid their uncomfortable thoughts by distracting themselves with things like TV shows, games, and their parlor ‘families.’

How this theme connects to modern day society:

This shows that if modern day society advances too far we must be careful not to get rid of all difficulties because without them we never experience life as it was meant to be lived, we must work for what we want to achieve if we are to enjoy achieving anything.