Curiosity In Fahrenheit 451

When I was younger, I used to have to go to sleep at 9 on weekdays and 10 on weekends. Coming into 6th grade, I was getting kinda tired of this routine and decided to ask if I could stay up later at night. After a bit of convincing, my parents agreed, and now I can go to sleep later. “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury takes place in a future where books are outlawed, and Guy Montag burns books for a living. Montag is tested when someone burns herself with her books in protest of the firemen, and he begins to read. But he is soon found out, and he has to burn the captain of the firemen to try to escape. With this, the theme of the book is to fight for what’s right.
The theme of being able to fight for what’s right is shown near the beginning of
Evidence to support that curiosity can lead to great things comes from part 2 of the book, where Bradbury wrote, “‘I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.’” Montag began to read books because he wasn’t happy with burning them, so he thought reading them might make him happy. He was curious enough about what was in these things that he had burned for so many years to start reading them, because so many people insisted on keeping them even though they knew what would happen if they were caught; Montag knows this too, but his curiosity and his desire to be happy drove him to read. Further, at the end of part 1, Bradbury says, “We can't do anything. We can't burn these. I want to look at them, at least look at them once.” Montag doesn’t want to burn the books he’d come across like he has done willingly so many times. He’s curious enough to begin reading, to look for something that makes him happier than burning books. However, the theme to fight for what’s right is a better theme for the story. Curiosity leads to great things still applies to the story; curiosity is part of what made Montag want to read in the first place. Although, while the curiosity was what made him want to read, being able to do the right thing is what finally made him read. If he was okay with the fact that all books must be burned, his curiosity alone probably wouldn’t get him to read. In the 2nd part of the book, Bradbury writes, "So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.” Montag believes that books give you something