Fahrenheit 451

At the beginning Guy Montag likes his job. It is a pretty prestigious job to have. Montag has enjoyed ten years of burning books. There is a certain amount of masculine pride he takes in it, perhaps similar to firemen today. He is also allowed certain freedoms that other people do not have. Montag actually gets to see forbidden books as he burns them to dust. Both his father and grandfather were Firemen and Montag seems happy to carry on the tradition. Things change after he meets Clarisse. Montag learns that his life is a metaphor of the society he lives in, empty and constricted. He begins to see that he is destroying the foundations of thought and human enlightenment. Montag begins to loath his job, secretly stealing books that he is supposed to burn.