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Catherine Cornelius
Ms. Cornelius
Mythology
16 November 2013
Freedom to Think: Montag’s Journey in Fahrenheit 451
Fire and knowledge are liberating elements. As Greek mythology instructs us, the titan
Prometheus sacrificed himself to provide mankind with the gift of fire (Leeming 139). With fire
man is able to survive harsh winters, forge tools, cook food, and build civilizations. Fire is a true
gift. However, fire has creative and destructive properties. In this way, fire and knowledge are
similar. Knowledge can be accessed to cure illness and disease or initiate great destruction in the
manner of atom bombs that level whole cities. It is left to every human to decide how this great
power will be employed in his or her own journey through life. Joseph’s Campbell’s monomyth
or hero’s journey details the degree of success or failure each of us achieves in our own personal
journey towards self-knowledge (Campbell 30). This symbolic connection of fire, knowledge,
and the hero’s journey is exemplified in Ray Bradbury’s iconic novel Fahrenheit 451. In this
text, the protagonist, Guy Montag, follows the monomyth cycle through the various stages of
departure, initiation, and return in his quest for the freedom to think and develop as a conscious
and authentic individual.
In his occupation as fireman in a dystopian society, Montag is consumed with the
destructive nature of his culture. He is an eager participant as he is introduced torching a heap of
contraband material - books: “It was a pleasure to burn” (Bradbury 3). His role in this society is
to destroy past culture by burning outlawed ideas and knowledge stored in books. For Montag,
this is the ordinary world or the starting point in Campbell’s monomyth. He does what he has
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been told without thought. Montag’s call to adventure comes in the form of a question asked by
an unusual seventeen year-old girl: “Are you happy?” she asks (Bradbury 10). This question
precipitates the possibility of another way of life, one which he has never considered before.
Initially he dismisses Clarisse’s question as nonsense, a form of refusing the call, but the
message is too powerful to ignore and he begins to examine his life and eventually answers. This
examination happens immediately upon returning home from work where he finds his wife,
Mildred, unconscious from an accidental overdose of pills. This is the beginning of Montag’s
departure on a journey that will deconstruct his life.
Montag struggles to bring his two worlds together. He tries to maintain his old life and
humor his wife, who is the prototype for this unthinking, self-indulgent, ignorance embracing
society. He seeks her support and that of a former suspect and college professor, Faber (who acts
as a mentor), as he treads gingerly towards the unknown – self-knowledge. Unfortunately for
Montag, his fire captain, Beatty, guards the threshold of his initiation into the unknown. After
one particularly symbolic fire station call to an old woman’s home, Montag witnesses the woman
taking her own life rather than surrendering her books. He tries to share this horrific event with
Mildred, but “suddenly she was so strange he couldn’t believe he knew her at all” (Bradbury 42).
Montag stays home from work. He is psychologically shattered and physically ill. His reaction
is what Campbell describes as the beginning of his metamorphosis. “Instead of passing outward,
beyond the confines of the physical world, the hero goes inward to be born again” (Campbell
90). Beatty, the threshold guardian, appears. He knows. He tries to convince Montag to return to
work during an unexpected visit to his home where he sits in a cloud of pipe smoke, smoke being
a symbol for the destructive properties of fire and a snuffing out of knowledge. Beatty knows the
psychological upheaval that Montag is experiencing. He heard the call himself years earlier and
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refused it. As he leaves he avows, “At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What
do the books say? … I have had to read a few in my time … and the books say nothing!”
(Bradbury 62) Montag is not convinced. He is in the process of a metamorphosis. He pursues
self-knowledge, the forbidden ideas that books reveal, and ventures inward towards this “liferenewing act” (Campbell 91-92). He is well on his way to face a road of trials.
Ironically, as a fireman, Montag has been stealing books from his victims’ hidden
libraries for some time. The thefts are described as if they are instinctual, and he has no control
over or true awareness of his actions. His “hand crushed the book with wild devotion … his hand
had done it all … with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling
finger” (Bradbury 37). “In this society, however, curiosity is strongly discouraged, because it
leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to questions” (Fenija 9). It is at this point in the
monomyth, that Montag experiences a series of trials. There is an air grate in Montag’s home,
which contains several books that he has confiscated over time. He finally decides to read one, at
night, alone, when Mildred is asleep. He tries to make his two worlds collide by encouraging
Mildred to listen to him read, but she recoils from the process and tries to burn the books he has
stolen (Bradbury 66). Mildred pleads with Montag to give up his pursuit of knowledge. This is
where Montag’s sacred marriage has become Campbell’s woman as temptress. Montag as “the
seeker of life beyond life must press beyond [Mildred], surpass the temptations of her call, and
soar to the immaculate [smoke free] ether beyond” (Campbell122). Part of Montag’s trial or
testing period is to resist the painful requests of his family.
Montag’s antagonism from Captain Beatty, his harassment by the mechanical hound who
guards the fire station, and the resistance he receives from Mildred are all a variety of trials that
he has to overcome along his journey towards self-knowledge - the freedom to think. It is at this
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time that Montag, the hero of his monomyth, is covertly aided by Faber, who is now the only
living person he knows who has the ability to guide him on his journey. Clarisse was
mysteriously “hit by a car” and he has no other person to look to for help. Montag makes a
nighttime trip to Faber’s house. Faber, his only potential mentor and connection to the past, does
not welcome Montag. As a former college professor, he has been in hiding for years. The last
thing he wants to deal with is a rogue member of his failing society, especially a fireman.
Montag blackmails Faber by ripping page after page out of the bible, one of the last copies in
existence. Finally – Faber agrees to listen to him if only to prevent him from destroying the text.
Lucky for Montag, Faber has been working on a mechanism that allows him to communicate
with others long distance. This is exactly what Montag needs to find the strength to continue on
with his plan, a plan to destroy the fire department. This is an example of assistance by
supernatural aid in the monomyth. The ear-shell that Faber gives Montag is essentially an amulet
that he can access to get “supernatural aid” from Faber. Tucked neatly in his ear, Faber will talk
him through his transformation from social drone to free-thinking human being.
Finally, Montag faces the belly of the whale as he and his crew are sent on a call to seek
and destroy books – the books in his own home. Mildred called the fire station and put in an
alarm on her own husband. “There was a crash like the falling parts of a dream fashioned out of
warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms (Bradbury 114). At this point Montag is watching the
disillusion of his former life. His wife has turned traitor and abandoned him, and his coworkers
are taking axes to his home. Captain Beatty orders, “I want you to do this job all by your
lonesome, Montag…with a flame thrower. Your house, your clean up” (116). Montag torches
every room in his house, all the artifacts of his life, burnt to the ground. “Transformation at this
stage feels like death. It is the old self dying” (Imhasly-Gandhy 81). Montag just enacted a ritual
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death and dismemberment of himself, and his old life. He has entered Campbell’s belly of the
whale. “This popular motif gives emphasis to the lesson that the passage of the threshold is a
form of self-annihilation” (Campbell 91). Montag’s existence has been wiped clean. Beatty
knocks the ear piece from Montag’s head and begins taunting him and goading him. Montag is
truly alone without the help of Faber. He turns the flame thrower on the captain who dies a
horrible death. Then, he is immediately attacked by the mechanical hound who anesthetizes his
leg. Montag is able to blast the creature with his flame thrower. But now, he is on his own and on
the run.
At this point, Montag’s monomyth transitions into the third phase or “return.” He takes
off through the city on a magical flight while the authorities call an all out manhunt for him. He
is pursued by mechanical hounds, helicopters, and police as he navigates through the streets. He
has in his possession that copy of the bible which he has begun to memorize. The television
stations broadcast his escape and encourage all citizens to open their doors and watch for his
approach. Montag does escape, but before he does, he plants a book in the house of one of the
firemen and calls an alarm on him. He also visits Faber one last time to share the events of the
destruction of his former life. After receiving the “blessing” from his mentor and friend, he takes
off to the river that separates the city from the rural areas and a train track that others have used
as a landmark for meeting like-minded outsiders. While in the river, Montag floats, “in sudden
peacefulness, away from the city and the lights and the chase, away from everything…moving
from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new”
(Bradbury 140). This is a time of reflection and rebirth for Montag. The river washes away all
remnants of his former life, baptizing his new developing identity.
Once in the country, Montag meets up with a small group of outsiders, former educators
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and social leaders who have taken refuge in the forest away from a culture they reject. These
men of learning and knowledge huddle around a small fire for warmth. Montag finds it “a
strange fire because it meant a different thing to him. It was not burning. It was warming…He
hadn’t known fire could look this way. He never thought in his life that it could give as well as
take” (Bradbury 146). This is where fire and knowledge converge. Montag must learn how to use
fire to create instead of destroy. The men welcome him and introduce themselves as book titles.
Each one memorizes a book, and then burns his copy. They have the book in their head, and no
one can accuse them of having contraband material. This is where fire can be used for protection
instead of destruction, and Montag joins the group vowing to memorize the book of Ecclesiastes.
The men have a small portable battery run television. They watch the city under siege by aircraft
dropping bombs. Montag watches as everyone he has known in his past life is destroyed. The
city is leveled to the ground. There is nothing but ashes. The men work together to put out their
campfire with water and dirt. Then they turn in the direction of the city and begin to cross the
return threshold. These men will rebuild the city from the ground up. They will “teach again…
what has been taught correctly and learned incorrectly a thousand thousand times” (Campbell
218). Their goal is to use fire to create civilization not destroy it. They are the living breathing
personification of past culture, and they will sow the seeds of knowledge they have protected in
the new culture they cultivate.
In this journey, Montag is successful. He sheds the destructive nature of fire and uses it to
burn his old life and forge a new one. Montag now has the freedom and responsibility to create
his own identity and be the hero of his own life. He brings the spark of knowledge to create a
civilization that values the freedom to think and feel. Like Prometheus, he risks everything to
bring a warming fire to his own life and to that of a new society.
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Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1953. Print.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Bollingen Series 17. 2nd ed. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1968.
Feneja, Fernanda L. "Promethean Rebellion in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Protagonist's
Quest." Almatea 4 (2012): 1-20. Print.
Imhasly-Gandhy, Rashna. “Myth, Archetype and Individuation.” India International Centre
Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 4 (WINTER 1992) 76-87. Print.
Leeming, David Adams. Mythology, the Voyage of the Hero. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Print.
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Catherine Cornelius
Ms. Cornelius
Mythology
20 November 2013
Freedom to Think: Montag’s Journey in Fahrenheit 451:
An Annotated Bibliography
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1953. Print.
This iconic novel is the subject of study for this paper. The plot of the novel is an
excellent example of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth in action. Montag. the protagonist,
experiences the departure – initiation – return of a hero as he destroys his old life and
identity and then rebuilds himself and a new identity. He experiences a physical and
psychological transformation and is seen at the end walking towards the razed city with
like-minded individuals. Their purpose is now to rebuild the city with hopes of not
making the same mistakes as their predecessors.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Bollingen Series 17. 2nd ed. Princeton:
Princeton UP, 1968.
This is the assigned text and pattern against which I am asked to analyze a fictional or
nonfictional protagonist. Campbell’s monomyth is a 17 stage archetype that most myth
critics use to analyze narrative patterns. It is a seminal test that is well-respected and
whose author is revered as one of the most influential myth analysts of the twentieth
century.
Feneja, Fernanda L. "Promethean Rebellion in Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Protagonist's
Quest." Almatea 4 (2012): 1-20. Print.
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This journal article concerns itself with the Promethean myth and its affect on science
fiction and dystopian fiction. It deals with Fahrenheit 451 specifically and the
importance of fire and knowledge, in this case symbolized in books. This article is
valuable because it bridges the gap between myth and science fiction. It provides
relevance for a mythic reading of Fahrenheit 451, which is the focus of this paper.
Imhasly-Gandhy, Rashna. “Myth, Archetype and Individuation.” India International Centre
Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 4 (WINTER 1992) 76-87. Print.
This article is written with a close analysis of Carl Jung and his understanding of the
human transformation necessary to gain a whole sense of self not burdened by society
or social expectations. This is one of the most difficult transformations possible.
Montag in Fahrenheit 451 is able to begin this transformation toward the end of the
novel. This article helps to illuminate how critical this transformation is for the
individual if he or she is to be successful in his or her journey.
Leeming, David Adams. Mythology, the Voyage of the Hero. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
Print.
This text was written prior to Joseph Campbell’s epic work. It was most likely one of
the many sources that Campbell read as he developed his own mythic philosophy. It
was a text that I was assigned in my undergraduate mythology course, and I have found
it extremely valuable. This text provides multiple examples of the various stages of the
Hero’s Journey and cites several examples from literary history to emphasize the
relevance of reading narrative through a mythic or archetypal lens.