Fahrenheit 51; Is Montag a Hero?

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Fahrenheit 51; Is Montag a Hero? Some people have confusion on whether Guy Montag, the main character in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, could be considered to be a heroic figure in the book. A hero is a person that makes the right decisions and does things for the good of others. Guy Montag didn’t make many great decisions and often did things for himself. If he was a good person from the start he wouldn’t have become a fireman in the first place, when his curiosity built on books he was becoming greedy for the knowledge, and finally, he killed his chief because of emotions. People who have read this book might have sympathized Guy Montag for he was changing to be a better person but overall he isn’t really the best hero. In Fahrenheit 451, the beginning of the book describes Montag doing his job as a fireman, a man who burns books. Books were considered illegal and so these men would have to search for them and burn them. These men were considered the “bad guys” right off the bat and Montag was a part of them. He did his job, and he enjoyed it. In the book, it even explained how Montag was smiling when burning the books. Yes, he didn’t know that what he was doing was bad but if he didn’t realize for himself then he would have probably continued his job as the bad guy fireman. Another thing that showed that Guy Montag wasn’t a true hero was that when he gained curiosity of books, he did it for himself. He was yearning for knowledge. He was being selfish, stealing books for his own good, not for the good of others. Near the end of the book he considered this but he didn’t think it on his own. He had Faber and Granger to help him on that path. If he hadn’t met those two, we would have probably kicked his wife, Mildred, out of the house and became a book hoarder. The ironic thing was that he stole the books when he went to burn the houses with the books. He
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