"Fahrenheit 451" Question 2

What are the causes, gains, and losses of the conflict dealt with in this book?  The main conflict of the book is when Clarisse, a gentle nature loving seventeen year old out main character meets and befriends, begins to question Montag's, our main character, life decisions.  He begins to question himself big time.  He slowly forms into a ginormous identity crisis.  He begins to question why is he a firefighter?  Why is literature banned?  And so on and so forth.  He is very conflicted, you could even say. (BAHAHA. It's the conflict and he is conflicted!  Crazy sauce!  Okay.)  Clarisse is helping him to see the gentler side of life with nature and mature and profound comments.  He begins to secretly stash some of the books from the book burning's and to read them.  At the same time, though, the life he has is the only way he's ever known.  He's very confused because he doesn't understand why all the people around him have been living a life of lies.  The cause of the conflict is Clarisee, when she begins to help Montag see a different side to life.  Once she begins to ask him important life questions, like about his happiness, and such he slowly goes down hill.  The losses of the conflict are quite numerous.  He's a firefighter, and his head figures out he has been hoarding literature.  He of course gets in trouble.  His wife, Mildred (Who was not much use anyway, unless you count the ability to watch television as a good quality in a spouse.)  leaves him.  He is forced to burn down his own house.  I'd say Montag looses quite a bit.  If you think about it, though, they aren't really that big of losses anyway.  None of those things made him truly happy.  They were just empty pits that he didn't know any better from so continued living in and with them.  The gains of the conflict are Montag is finally on his way to being truly happy.  He ends up with secret ex-professors in the woods once he's on the run from the authorities.  He can truly begin to immerse himself in literature and find true happiness.  


Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.