How Ray Bradbury used Characters to Show the Theme in Fahrenheit 451 Essay Example

Would you want to live in a heavily manipulated society and completely throw away history? In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the author uses the characters to represent different themes in this dystopian society, those more predominate being Beatty, Faber, and Guy Montag.

The Fire chief ,Beatty, represents the Law and order in the society. He comes to Guy Montag’s house unannounced then goes off on a tangent and talks about the society and the people and how “[They] must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal” (Bradbury 55). Beatty believes that for a society to work everyone must think the same act the same and be the same. He thinks that is the only way to get “peace” and order. Beatty talks about how people shouldn’t go on and on with mourning, he thinks people should “Forget them. Burn all, Burn everything. Fire is bright Fire is clean” (Bradbury 57). Beatty believes people should follow the rules and be happy so anything that makes them sad should be completely thrown away and not paid attention to. As you can see Beatty is a very formal character who follows and enforces the laws and order of the society.

Faber represents how the past and older generations miss the way things used to be, and how they want this new society to change. Faber was talking about how messed up the society is and that “Those who don't build must burn, its as old as history and juvenile delinquents” (Bradbury 85). Faber has seen a lot of things and notices that there are only two people. He notices from being able to watch as the society grows that there are those who build and those who burn. As Faber is teaching Guy about the old society and the use of books he tells him that “The whole cultures shot through the skeleton needs melting and reshaping.” (Badbury 83). Faber knows that something in this society is wrong. He bases it off of how it used to be and knows something has to be changed. Faber is a character who as seen how the society used to be and hopes that it can get back to the way it was, books and all.

Guy Montag fully represents the change that needs to be had in this dystopian society. After the fireman burned the lady with all of her books, Montag began to think of the books in a different way “And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of those books” (Bradbury 49). Montag noticed that books must mean something more than he thought when he saw this elderly women die for them. He changed his prior thoughts and pondered the thought of something different. When Montag and Faber are talking about their plans to change the society's ways he knew “There has to be someone ready when it blows up” and he wanted that person to be him (Bradbury 84). Montag realizes the stunt they were trying to pull of would change everything about the world he is living in it would change his whole like, but still he decided that he wanted to be one of the people to help build it back up. Montag was by far the most complex character and he enhanced the theme of change.

In this novel Bradbury used these characters to enhance certain themes across the story. In conclusion Bradbury created these characters with the whole detailed story in mind and made sure each character was more than just a name on a page.