Fate And Free Will in ‘Fahrenheit 451’

Fate and free will is a topic that can go in a variety of ways. I personally believe that we are raised to recognize the choices given to us, their impact on our actions and the effects they have on our daily lives. With free will, we can take one path or the other and see where the road takes us. But, our future does not always turn out the way we plan it, due to the free will we perpetrate.

As a result, we create our own destiny with our own actions every single day.

In the book Fahrenheit 451, the main character Guy Montag, faces lots of examples of free will. Throughout the passage, Montag is able to carry out his duties of burning books without any issues. However, when he started to become curious about these books, he began to doubt everything. On one evening, he was forced to burn a stack of books that was owned by an old woman that absolutely did not want to leave her books.

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Consequently, the old woman committed suicide because she did not want to abandon her belongings, including the books. When Montag finds out the truth and the effects of reading the books, he takes action by carrying out his free will and it motivates him to create his own destiny. With that, he decided to steal a book. Moreover, Montag carries out his free will when he decides to go against the law and read the book. This is one of the many events that started to change his views.

Later in the text it mentions other characters, Clarisse and Professor Faber that also take part in changing his views. Throughout this story, the people are either supposed to follow society or use their free will to shape their own destiny. Towards the end of the book, his destiny is changed when he meets a group of people that encouraged him to follow his dream of changing the world with books.

In conclusion, every day, with every action, every thought, and decision we make, we are exercising our free will. The result is that we are carving out our future. Hopefully, all of these factors will shape our lives as we hoped it to be. Unfortunately, sometimes those same actions take us down a different road and lead us to a completely different place just like it did with Montag.