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Guy Montag | |
---|---|
Fahrenheit 451 character | |
Created by | Ray Bradbury |
Portrayed by | Oskar Werner (1966 film) Michael B. Jordan (2018 film) |
In-universe information | |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | Fireman (book burner) |
Spouse | Mildred (wife) |
Guy Montag is a fictional character and the protagonist in Ray Bradbury's dystopia novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953). He is depicted living in a futuristic town where he works as a "fireman" whose job is to burn books and the buildings they are found in.
At the opening of the novel, he is happy in his work destroying books and never wonders about his role as a tool of thought suppression. Several events cause him to question his own existence:
Over the course of the novel, Montag becomes increasingly disillusioned with the hedonistic, anti-intellectual society around him. Bradbury emphasizes that the U.S. government, in burning books, is merely expressing the will of a people whose short attention spans, indifference, and hedonism have gradually eroded any semblance of intellectualism from public life. Schools no longer teach the humanities, children are casually violent, and adults are constantly distracted by "seashells" (small audio devices resembling earbuds) and insipid television programs displayed on wall-sized screens. Authors and readers are regarded as pretentious and dangerous to the well-being of society. He meets many characters that change his outlook on life such as Clarisse and Faber.
After an incident where Montag tries to read a poem to his wife's friends when they are visiting, his wife denounces their house as book-possessing. Montag's fire chief, Beatty, tries to persuade him that books are evil, and urges him to return to the unthinking fireman mentality, but Montag refuses.
After the firehouse receives an alert, Beatty drives the fire truck to the location, which is Montag's house. Beatty forces Montag to set fire to his own house. After Montag is finished, Beatty confronts Montag and discovers the device he uses to communicate with Faber. After Beatty vows to track down who was on the other line, Montag turns the fire hose on Beatty and burns him to death.
He flees through the city streets to Faber's house, with another firehouse's mechanical hound and television network helicopters in hot pursuit. When he arrives at Faber's home, the old man tells Montag of vagabond book-lovers in the countryside. Montag then escapes to a local river, floats downstream and meets a group of older men who, to Montag's astonishment, have memorized entire books, preserving them orally until the law against books is overturned. The war begins. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons.
Montag's fate is expanded on in the semi-canonical 1984 video game Fahrenheit 451, which acts as a sequel to the novel. In the game, Montag has continued to evade and resist the Firemen for over five years after the end of the novel and is sent on a mission to break into New York Library and transmit its microcassette archive to the Underground. He succeeds and reunites with Clarisse (who is alive in this version) during the process; however, the Firemen storm the building and immolate them both.
In the 1995 Strategy game StarCraft, a firebat hero is named Gui Montag.
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by American writer Ray Bradbury. It presents a future American society where books have been outlawed and "firemen" burn any that are found. The novel follows in the viewpoint of Guy Montag, a fireman who becomes disillusioned with his role of censoring literature and destroying knowledge, eventually quitting his job and committing himself to the preservation of literary and cultural writings.
Ray Douglas Bradbury was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, and realistic fiction.
The Martian Chronicles is a science fiction fix-up novel, published in 1950, by American writer Ray Bradbury that chronicles the exploration and settlement of Mars, the home of indigenous Martians, by Americans leaving a troubled Earth that is eventually devastated by nuclear war.
A fireman is a firefighter. It may also be used restrictively to refer only to male firefighters.
Oskar Werner was an Austrian stage and cinema actor who reached international fame. His most prominent roles include two 1965 films, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and Ship of Fools. For the latter Werner received an Oscar nomination. Other notable films include Decision Before Dawn (1951), Jules and Jim (1962), Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968) and Voyage of the Damned (1976).
Michel Faber is a Dutch-born writer of English-language fiction, including his 2002 novel The Crimson Petal and the White, and Under the Skin (2000) which was adapted for film by Jonathan Glazer, starring Scarlett Johansson. His novel for young adults, D: A Tale of Two Worlds, was published in 2020. His book, Listen: On Music, Sound and Us, a non-fiction work about music, came out in October 2023.
In Greek mythology, the Pierian Spring of Macedonia was sacred to the Pierides and the Muses. As the metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science, it was popularized by a couplet in Alexander Pope's 1711 poem An Essay on Criticism: "A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
The Firemen's Ball is a 1967 Czechoslovak New Wave satirical comedy directed by Miloš Forman. It is set at the annual ball of a small town's volunteer fire department, and the plot portrays a series of disasters that occur during the evening. The film uses few professional actors – some characters are played by the firemen of the small town where it was filmed. By portraying the prevailing corruption of the local community and the collapse of even well-intentioned plans, the film satirized the communist system.
"The Exiles" is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury. It was originally published as "The Mad Wizards of Mars" in Maclean's on September 15, 1949 and was reprinted, in revised form, the following year by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. First collected in The Illustrated Man (1951), it was later included in the collections R Is for Rocket (1962), Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales (2003), A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories (2005) and A Pleasure to Burn. It was also published in "The Eureka Years: Boucher and McComas's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" (ISBN 0553206737).
Fahrenheit 451 is a 1966 British dystopian drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, and Cyril Cusack. Based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury, the film takes place in a controlled society in an oppressive future, in which the government sends out firemen to destroy all literature to prevent revolution and thinking. This was Truffaut's first colour film and his only non French-language film. At the 27th Venice International Film Festival, Fahrenheit 451 was nominated for the Golden Lion.
Let's All Kill Constance is a mystery novel by American writer Ray Bradbury, published in 2002. Narrated by an unnamed Los Angeles writer and set in 1960, it chronicles an unexpected visit from aging Hollywood actress Constance Rattigan who gives him two death lists of once-famous people — with Constance's name on one of them, and the gradual unraveling of the mystery by the narrator with the help of private investigator Elmo Crumley.
"The Pedestrian" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ray Bradbury. This story was originally published in the August 7, 1951 issue of The Reporter by The Fortnightly Publishing Company. It is included in the collection The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953), but was dropped from later editions of this collection.
Fahrenheit 451 is an interactive fiction game released in 1984 based on the 1953 novel of the same name by Ray Bradbury. Originally released by software company Trillium, it was re-released in 1985 under the company's new name Telarium.
The following is a list of works by Ray Bradbury.
Mr. Monk Goes to the Firehouse (2006) is a mystery novel by Lee Goldberg, based on the popular TV series Monk. In the novel, Adrian Monk temporarily moves in with his assistant, Natalie Teeger, while his home is being fumigated. Following this, her teenage daughter Julie "hires" him to investigate the death of Sparky, a popular firehouse guard dog who was struck with an ax on the same night that a house inferno was occupying its owners.
Fahrenheit 451 Books was a bookstore, formerly located on 509 South Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, California. It was described by the Los Angeles Times as a "literary landmark" of the region. It closed in 1994.
Fireman Save My Child is a 1954 American comedy film starring Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett. The movie was originally intended for Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. It was directed by Leslie Goodwins.
A Pleasure to Burn: Fahrenheit 451 Stories is a collection of short stories by American writer Ray Bradbury, first published August 17, 2010. A companion to novel Fahrenheit 451, it was later released under the Harper Perennial imprint of HarperCollins publishing was in 2011.
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Fahrenheit 451 is a 2018 American dystopian drama film directed and co-written by Ramin Bahrani, based on the 1953 book of the same name by Ray Bradbury. It stars Michael B. Jordan, Michael Shannon, Khandi Alexander, Sofia Boutella, Lilly Singh, Grace Lynn Kung and Martin Donovan. Set in a future America, the film follows a "fireman" whose job it is to burn books, which are now illegal, only to question society after meeting a young woman. After premiering at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, the film aired on HBO on May 19, 2018, receiving mixed critical reviews, with praise for the performances and visuals, but criticism for the screenplay and lack of faithfulness to the source material.