There are many things worth discussing in Fahrenheit 451, certainly more than just the ones listed below. However, this introduction to the characters will act, I hope, at least as a starting point.

THE HOUND

The Hound acts as a stand-in for many different themes in the book, not least of all the possible dangers of technology or the elimination of dissent.

Might I add, however, that the Hound further underlines the blurred line between what is alive and what is not alive. The Hound (the dead beast, the living beast”) “lived but did not live” (22, 21). Mildred on the other hand is “tomblike” (9) and the not-doctors who tend to her emotionlessly after her suicide attempt are mere “handymen” (13). In some ways, a machine is more alive, is certainly more passionate, than the majority of human characters in the book.

CLARISSE

Manic pixie dream girl elements aside, Clarisse is an important catalyst for Montag’s journey. The metaphors used to describe her, heavy-handed though they may be at times, can also be interesting in light of larger themes. Clarisse . . .

• Is described as white or pale no fewer than four times in the paragraph introducing her (Innocence)
• Causes the very trees to sigh in her presence (Nature). No but really, how great is this line? “The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain” (3). Sigh, indeed.
• Takes something (blindness, perhaps) from Montag with mere curiosity, as if “shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets” (4).
• Is like “the strangely comfortable . . . light of the candle” (5). In other words, she is able to redefine fire, another central metaphor of the book (see below).
• Is like a clock (8). Not just any clock, but a clock telling time in the middle of the night. In other words, she is able to name what IS, fact not opinion, and does so with certainty even in the (metaphoric) dark.
• Is like a mirror, both because she pays attention to whoever she is with (unusual enough in their world) and also because she is able to show Montag his true self, thereby setting off all the events of the novel.

BEATTY

Beatty is a problem for us readers because Beatty is WELL READ. He knows books and still dismisses them. Not only that, he is not entirely wrong in his arguments. He even recalls something of Ecclesiastes (“All is vanity!”) when he talks about how much happier men are when they realize “slippery stuff like philosophy” leads only to “melancholy” because that dang universe just refuses to “be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely” (58).

Even still, he too holds no solutions because Beatty wants to die. His way is not happiness either.

Perhaps Beatty, like Montag, is disappointed it is not such an easy solution as just “books.” It’s the sieve and the sand dilemma all over again. Perhaps part of his problem is in the very fact that he “knows all the answers” as his certainty cuts off any opportunity for self-reflection (62). For whatever reason, he acts as a perfect devil on the shoulder for Montag, and the reader, as he and we try to unravel the answers for ourselves.

FABER

Faber isn’t happy either, but he seems a little closer to whatever place the book is leading us. He makes clear answer to each of Beatty’s arguments, and, while he and Beatty are in their own ways equally right, it seems pretty clear which worldview “wins” the debate.

BEATTY	FABER
Quality information makes us uncomfortable and insecure, or even causes pain.	Quality information allows for a connection to self and others.
Too much time leads to boredom, or, worse, an opportunity to sit with our own deep discomfort.	Time gives us an opportunity to agree or disagree, and therefore to better understand ourselves.
If given the freedom to act, we will feel pressure and too much sense of responsibility. We might fail.	Freedom to act means a chance to discover our true potential.

FIRE

Fire has a number of meanings in the book, and seems almost a character in its own right. It is all of the following, simultaneously and separately, and the opportunities to analyze its role in Fahrenheit 451 are countless.

• Destruction . . . of books, of houses, of cities, of Beatty and the woman burned with her books, of “responsibility and consequences” (109).
• The spark of rebellion. Master Ridley and Montag both; “This fire’ll last me the rest of my life!” Montag tells Mildred (48).
• Renewal, like the phoenix Granger mentions
• Clarisse is described as being like a candle, comfortable and illuminating
• The hearth– something warming, not just burning, that “can give as well as take” (139).
• A particularly famous passage claims the sun “burned time” (134). When everything will be burned away with time, when in other words we are faced with our own mortality and the impermanence of every mortal thing, we are forced to confront the truths all around us that we would perhaps otherwise prefer to avoid.
• Put all this together and what are we left with? You tell me!