Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury :: essays research papers

In the book Fahrenheit 451 there are many characters that have short parts and go by unnoticed to some. Other characters have noticeable parts but they are short and by the end of the book you forget about them. The minor characters are used to support ideas or to give background for the main character or characters. They have an important part in all stories and yet, for some reason, they are forgotten quickly and not given a second thought. In the book there are more than two minor characters but to bore you with all of them would be cruel so we won’t bother. The two that we will discuss are the ones that appealed to us the most. The first character I want to talk about is Clarisse McClellan. Clasrisse is a free spirited girl who is used to describe the way things are now in the world that Guy (the main character) and she live in. she is a teenager who live with her uncle, who is a very smart man of the old time and he tells her about the way things used to be. The main reason Clarisse is in the story is to show the ills of the world that is described in the book and to show Guy a new way of life. This is the basis for the changes that happen to Guy, emotionally, later in the book. After Clarisse serves her purpose in the plot, she is killed off. The other character that we feel is influential in the book is captain Beatty. Beatty opens Guys eyes to the truth as he sees it. He Finally tells Guy about the way things really used to be. He tells him the truth about what firemen used to do and the way the world used to work. But unlike Clarisse, Beatty likes the new world more and he tells Guy the way things used to be in a way that is distorted a little to make it seem horrible.