#6 MOOD

Pg 18
“’I don’t know anything any more,’ he said, and let a sleep lozenge dissolve on his tongue.”

Pg 140-141
Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life. The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!

Pg 144
He stood breathing, and the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There would always be more than enough.


In almost all stories, the mood of the book is conveyed by the feelings of the main characters. Guy Montag is one confused man. In this book, his life is destroyed and he starts a new one, with new friends, new thoughts, new beliefs... Life is full of new things, and every time we encounter something new, we change. The Guy Montag at the beginning of this book and the Guy Montag in the last page is not the same. He realizes how "everything burns." The sun burns itself, time burns, and firemen burn. However since the sun cannot stop burning and time will forever burn, Guy realizes that he must be the one to stop, and decides to never burn again, to quit being a fireman. This is a big step for Guy- he has been a fireman for ten years. Now he must find a new job. When someone asks him, "Who are you?" or "What do you do?" He cannnot say that he is a fireman anymore. He must come up with a different answer, a different identity for himself. Also, his purpose is no longer to retain other people's happiness nor to burn books. He does not live in the same kind of world anymore. Before, he lived in the kind of world where nothing was ever enough. this can be seen through his wife, Mildred's behavior. Mildred is a model of a normal person in the dystopian world of Fahrenheit 451. She is not satisfied with what she has and is always looking for more. This is the kind of world Guy lived in at the beginning of the story. However, when he jumps into a river and is carried downstream, the river flows into a whole new beginning. When Montag reaches land, his thoughts on land itself is different. Now, he says, "There would always be more than enough." Throughout the story, Montag goes through a big shift in his life. Similiarily, the mood is also altered. For most of the story, its mood is frightening, sinister, unsettled, and confused. To read a book is illegal, there is a new kind of machine called the mechanical hound that kills people, there is no honesty between people anymore, and Guy is at a loss as to where he stands in the world. However Montag leaves all of this behind and chooses a new beginning. His home is destroyed by atomic bombs. All of his friends and family that he knew are now dead, and he begins a journey with his new friends, searching for the right place and the right time for him to plant his beliefs into the ground so that they will be able to spring up and become prolific. The mood does have a sense of sadness because of everything Guy gives up and leaves behind. also, the word burning gives a dark, gloomy tone to the story in the first place.