“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury (post 2): Novel about “man falling in love with books” reflects author’s multiple personality

The title is the temperature at which books burn. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman of the future, when the job of fire departments is to set fire to, and destroy, the homes of people who own books, most of which are illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Author’s Comment

“I’m a preventer of futures, I’m not a predictor of them. So Montag is myself running through the future, as afraid as I am at times…And along the way, meeting other people who are really myself…

“And all this goes back into my own background…I’m a library-educated person; I’ve never made it into college. When I left high school, I began to go to the library every day of my life…And my books are full of libraries and librarians and book people…I have written a book about a man falling in love with books” (1, pp. 195-196).

Gratuitous Multiple Personality

In my previous post on Bradbury, I quoted a poem by him, which is a virtual declaration that he had multiple personality. And I was curious to see whether it would be reflected in his best-known novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The novel makes no mention of multiple personality. It is not necessary to the plot. But the following descriptions of characters’ thoughts, behavior, and subjective experience are typical of multiple personality.

“‘What?’ asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience” (1, p. 8).

“He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (1, p. 21).

“Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief” (1, p. 35).

“But that was another Mildred [Montag’s wife], that was a Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women had never met” (1, 49).

“Montag’s hands picked up the Bible. He saw what his hands had done and he looked surprised” (1, p. 84).

“Montag felt himself turn and walk to the wall slot and drop the book in through the brass notch to the waiting flames” (1, p. 97).

Several of the above are made actions, in which persons feel that they are made to act in certain ways. If persons feel they were made to act that way by an outside force, then it may be psychotic. But if, as in the above examples, they feel they were made to act against their will, or in an out-of-character way, by something inside them, then it is probably an alternate personality, pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

1. Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 [1953]. 60th Anniversary Critical Edition. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013.