Kristen, Karina, Erica, Liz The ABCs of Fahrenheit 451 Kristen, Karina, Erica, Liz

is for Ambition The ambition of wanting to know about the world. Montag felt a strong ambition to read books and to understand the meaning of the words.

is for Bible, the religious book which brings peace to Montag. He feels closer to God and believes that he needs to memorize it before it’s too late. The Bible also plays a strong part in professor Faber’s life.

is for Captain Beatty, a dishonest fireman who always talks about what he learned from books. He’s the antagonist in the story who believes books are evil.

is for Death Death , a cold descriptive words against all humanity. A cold feeling of fear because of books and guilty mends.

is for Escape Montag escapes from the city into the country.

is for Fahrenheit 451, the temperature at which paper burns.

is for Guilty conscious The feeling of doing wrong. Montag feels guilty for having books in his house. It never stops haunting him.

is for Hell, the place where Montag feels he’s in. The fire burns him inside as he watches the hell everybody goes through for protecting their books.

is for Intellectual, which has become a swear word. It is a crime to be smart and think. The act of trying to read books and learn from them is a crime.

is for Jets The aircrafts fly around their houses. Montag is tired of them, but they are always there showing that a war is about to begin.

is for Kerosene, the oil used to start fires. Montag thinks of it as a sense of cologne.

is for Literature Beatty is a complex character, full of contradictions. He is a book burner with a large knowledge of literature. He is someone who obviously cared about books at one point.

is for Mildred Mildred is one major character in the book who seems to have no hope in resolving conflicts within herself. Her suicide attempts suggest she is in great pain and her obsession with television means she is trying to avoid confronting her life.

is for Neighbor Montag’s neighbor is a seventeen year old girl named Clarisse McClellan who opens Montag’s eyes to the emptiness of his life with her innocent and unusual questions and love of people and nature.

is for Overdose Mildred has an overdose on her pills and collapses on the floor.

is for Phoenix The symbol of the Phoenix’s rebirth refers not only to the circle of nature’s history and the rebirth of humankind but also to Montag’s spiritual resurrection.

is for Questioning Captain Beatty begins getting suspicious about Montag and starts to question him. When Montag says that he wouldn’t like to be the next victim of the hound, Beatty replies “Why, you got a guilty conscious about something?”

is for Religion Faber invokes the Christian value of forgiveness, after Montag turns against society. Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine just like in the biblical story when Jesus Christ transformation of water into wine was a great miracle.

is for Sieve and the Sand The idea of the sieve and the sand is taken from Montag’s childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from his cousin. He compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible so that some of the material will stay in his memory.

is for Technology Technology is the thing Ray Bradbury shows can sometimes be harmful against mankind.

is for Uniform The uniform of the firemen has two symbols engraved on it: Phoenix and Salamander.

is for Voting The women would vote based on appearances. They didn’t want someone who was fat, ugly, and said big words.

is for War The world is at war.

is for eXpressionless Books were hated and feared because it showed the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, pore less, hairless, expressionless.

is for Yelling Montag and his wife yell and argue. Their life is almost based on this. This is their communication.

is for Zealous Montag is zealous, or enthusiastic, to learn new things and to go against his beliefs and Beatty’s and to help Faber bring books back to life.

The End of the Fahrenheit 451 ABCs