In today's society people react to what happens around them in many different ways. Some decide they don't know enough and decide to know more. Others think they know enough or simply don't care. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 two of the main characters demonstrate these traits. Bradbury uses people and symbols to convey his message: if people do not begin to appreciate their freedom based on knowledge, they will lose it. Bradbury also uses the overabundance of technology to show how people's understanding of the way the world works deteriorates. Through the characters Guy Montag and his wife Mildred Montag, Bradbury demonstrates the willingness, and lack thereof, to learn, the effect society and technology have on them, and how the two respond to the knowledge and intuition of books when given the opportunity. .Guy Montag, usually called “Montag,” is a third-generation firefighter in the world of Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury 42). His world is a place where firefighters start fires rather than put them out; until the beginning of the book he questions nothing of what he is told (Bradbury 15). Montag goes through a series of events that make him question what he always knew. He learns that not all people are what his society deems normal, and when a woman is burned alive he feels he needs to know more about what these books are about (Bradbury 16, 35). As these events unfold before him, Guy becomes more and more intrigued by the books. He becomes so intrigued by it that he steals a book from the woman's house before they burn it, which it later turns out he has been doing for a while (Bradbury 34, 53). In all this Montag discovers that he is rather dissatisfied with his life, but he doesn't know... that the paper......or he would lose his perception of the world, but even if they happened to get so far from their knowledge, their society and humanity as they knew it would cease to exist. Works Cited Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. PDF.Patai, Daphne. “Ray Bradbury and the Assault on Free Thought.” Society 50.1 (2013): 41-47. Academic research completed. Network. 20 April 2014. Sisario, Pietro. “A Study of Allusions in Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451”” The English Journal 59.2 February (1970): 201+. JSTOR. Network. April 20, 2014.Smolla, Rodney A. “The Life of the Mind and a Meaningful Life: Reflections on “Fahrenheit 451”” Michigan Law Review Survey of Books Related to Law 107.6 (2009): 895-912 . JSTOR. Network. April 20, 2014. Telgen, Diane, ed. "Fahrenheit 451: Ray Bradbury 1953." Novels for students. vol. 1. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1997. 138-57. Press.