Characters

** ~ ~ ~ C h a ract e r s ~ ~ ~  **

Guy Montag is the protagonist in the story. He works as a fireman, meaning he burns books, but he is not a fireman at heart. His father and grandfather were both firemen and he had no choice but to become one himself. He has a wife named Mildred, whom he doesn't truly love (according to the dandelion Clarrise once rubbed on his chin). Before he meets Clarisse McClellan, he has been living a blank life of fake happiness. She gives him new ways of thinking of things, in truth, making him actually //think//, which he has never really done before. He discovers that he needs to change his community. He decides that he will explore books that were supposed to be burned, but that he collected and hid behind his air-conditioning vent. Montag often gets angry at the world. For example, on a subway ride to Faber's house, he screams like a madman just because the speakers keep repeating "Denham's Dentrifice." Guy Montag drove the whole plot and theme of the story. He grew to realize that society was deteriorating without books. Through his experiences and thoughts the reader sees how corrupt the world became without knowledege and curiosity. He turned the key in the lock and unleashed a burning desire to right the world and change.
 * **__ Guy Montag: __**

Clarisse McClellan is the one who first stirred Montag from his book-burning reverie. Her eternally curious face alone seems to reflect Montag’s expressions and innermost thoughts to him. She has a slender, very thin and clocklike milk-white face, shining, dark violet-amber eyes that reflect the world in them, and a graceful, sliding walk. Clarisse is an inquisitive seventeen-year old (almost), already knowing much about the past and constantly thinking about the present. She is quite different from the others in her community in that she does not turn to parlor-watching, driving at high speed, or doing crazy acts to please herself, but instead studies nature and especially the people around her. Clarisse seems to be motivated by her uncle, who, I am sure, would have had the same open-minded curiosity. Clarisse is insightful and full of innocent wonder; she first opens Montag’s mind to the life he was living by asking him, “Are you happy?” Clarisse soon dies in a car wreck, but her impression on Montag stays with him forever, fueling his increasingly burning desire to make his world sane. The author’s intent in creating Clarisse was to include a person in the book who is not empty-headed, but joyful and not afraid to show it. She is the one who inspired Montag and gives the reader someone to really love. Clarisse’s presence in the book offers a speck of light and hope that everything will turn out right in the end.
 * **__Clarisse McCellan:__**



Mildred is married to Montag. She is the typical woman of her day, listening to the walls in the parlor that contain her "relatives" to the point of obsession. One night she takes all the sleeping pills in her container, which was about 30, when she was only supposed to take two. Montag has to call for machines to clean her out, giving her new blood and sucking out all the slush in her stomach. She is thirty years old, but sometimes seems less mature. She is forgetful as she tells Montag a week after Clarisse died about her death. She also can't remember where she and Guy met, but this is shared by Montag. She ends up turning Montag in to the police and firemen, and when they smash the parlor, she leaves in a bout of delusion.
 * ** __Mildred:__ **

Mildred's purpose in the story and the purpose of creating her was to demonstrate what happens to society when books are banned. She is there to be the perfect model of what the people will deteriorate into.

Beatty is the Captain of the Firemen. He is described as having "charcoal hair and soot colored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks." There is also the smell of burning from his pipe. Beatty was the first character to suspect that Guy had stolen a book. Beatty seems to be just another unfeeling Fireman, but sometimes he reveals that he knows more about the past than is normal. At one point, Montag makes a conclusion that Beatty is afraid of free-thinking people like Clarisse. At one point, Beatty reveals that he has read the books. He says that they say absolutely nothing. He says that they all disagree with each other, and that whoever reads them comes away lost. He goes on to say that it wasn’t the government that first banned the books, but the public. In the bloated population, there were so many minority groups that practically nothing could be said without offending someone. The books were too controversial for everyone’s taste. They were burnt to keep the public ‘happy.’
 * ** __Captain Beatty:__ **

This also relates to the theme of the book, which I see as saying that if the public grows to detest the spread of knowledge and opinions and variety, as in books, then society will undergo drastic deterioration. Beatty’s logic says that the ‘bright’ people make others feel bad, so get rid of them. He says that everyone must be the same, so that everyone can be happy.

Professor Faber can be described as one of Guy Montag's mentors. He is very old with near-white skin and used-to-be blue eyes that have faded. He used to teach at a university. Professor Faber also does not agree with the banning of the books and sees it as a meaningless act. Even though he disapproves, he is a coward and admits it. He does not protest. Instead he believes that it is much safer to live a quiet life. Near the end of the book, Faber seems to be sorry for being a coward and is bold enough to give Montag a headset, so that he could listen in on Montag's conversation with Beatty.
 * **__Professor Faber__**

Faber and Montag met in a park. Guy Montag recalls seeing Professor Faber with a book, and that is how they met. After their meeting, Faber gave Montag his contact information, and they went their separate ways until Montag called him one day and later went to his house.

Professor Faber helps Montag deal with his anger at the world. He shares the same views as Montag and knew the world before the knowledge died. He is not an empty-headed man, but an example of how the desire for knowledge never truly dies. Even though he was a coward he still hungered for books.



The Mechanical Hound is a killing machine. There are actually two in the story, but they have the same goal: kill whatever unlucky victim is programmed into it. Unfortunately, Montag is the unlucky person programmed into its system. The Mechanical Hound is a machine with green-blue neon eyes and eight legs with rubber paws, which is not the way we would normally picture a regular hound today, but the Mechanical Hound is in no way a regular hound. It has a four-inch hollow steel needle in its head to inject morphine or procaine to kill its victim.
 * __**The Mechanical Hound**__

The Mechanical Hound's purpose in the story is to give Montag something to fear. Montag kills the first Hound (but not before it briefly stabs Montag with its deadly needle), but then a second Hound is brought in, after Montag kills Beatty. The second Hound is programmed to hunt down and kill Guy.

The Mechanical Hound is the personification of what happens when a society is made unfeeling and cold. The Hound is alive, but not alive. Beatty describes it as merely a weapon, unthinking. It does it's told, then shuts back down. However, should something so lethal really be unthinking, unable to feel morally? I think the author created the Hound not only as an antagonist to Montag, but as a sign of how far gone society in the story really was.