Good Essay On Differences Between The Book Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury And Its Movie

The film Fahrenheit 451, which was directed by the stalwart director François Truffaut, was made fourteen years after the novel with the same name was published. Ray Bradbury’s literary work and the film have certain conspicuous similarities as well as differences from one another. However, the basic plot of the book was maintained while making the film without too much change.
As the book was adapted into a film, certain key characters and scenes were left out in the process. Faber is one such important character which is missing from the film. The book by Bradbury portrays the character of Faber as an aged retired professor of English who actually worked for the very last college that existed before it closed down too. Faber played the important role of teaching Guy Montag, the protagonist of the story, about the realm of literature.
Thus, a few very important events described in the book are absent in the cinematic adaptation in association with the missing characters from the book. The book has vivid description of how Montag escaped after killing Captain Beatty and how he got to know about the details regarding the book people. He even received advice from his teacher, Faber, putting to use the green bullet in his ear. The book describes how Faber can use this green bullet to converse with Montag. All this is left out in the film by Truffaut.
Montag could also use this bullet to listen to the things which people spoke around him. Faber also played an instrumental role in Montag’s keeping a clear mind when he proceeded to meet Captain Beatty at the firehouse to give him back one of his books. Beatty had planned to scare the protagonist by igniting an argument which he had a dream about. The makers of the film also chose to keep out of the film.
It has been described in the novel by Bradbury how the parlor walls of Guy Montag were actually interactive televisions which covered all the walls. These actually stood for the surmounting effect of social media on the lives of human beings and how they are consumed by it. In stark contrast, the film portrays only one television which is seen on the wall of the parlor.
The character of Hound, who is similar to a robotic killer designed to come across like an aged firehouse dog, is not present in the film. In the book, Hound plays an important part when it is programmed by Captain Beatty to go and warn Montag. Later, Hound is reprogrammed by Beatty to assassinate Montag if he endeavored to escape from his very last mission of burning the books. In the literary version of Fahrenheit 451, this is the scene where Captain Beatty meets with his demise. In juxtaposition to the novel, the film never goes into the portraiture of these details and moves directly to the death of the captain.
The book also describes how the character of Clarisse met with her untimely end. She is hit by a car to meet her death. Montag goes on to be reminiscent about the brief span of time spent with her all through the novel. However, it has been portrayed in the film that he does not die and actually manages to get away while the rest of her family members get arrested by the firemen.
Thus, the book gets transformed quite a bit in the cinematic adaptation by François Truffaut. Many scenes and characters are left out from the film as the director chooses not to include so much of intricate details in the movie.
The film takes a very different approach while portraying the female characters of the book and the director actually takes the supreme liberty to utilize his cinematic vision and artistic mind to find an expression of his own in this regard.
A very interesting aspect of the filmic version is the fact that the director opts to cast the same actress to play the roles of Linda and Clarisse. This seems to be a logical decision on the part of the acclaimed filmmaker. He wishes to communicate with his audience how the women folk of the society cannot uphold their individualistic identity in the present day scenario of the society and how they are similar that way. The two women are greatly different from each other in their thoughts and beliefs. Still, Guy Montag keeps on searching for signs of Clarisse in his spouse. The protagonist is, however, not giving paramount importance to the physical appearance, but endeavoring to find congruity between the soul and wisdom of the two ladies.
Although Clarisse meets with her demise in the novel, in the film, she survives to become Montag’s tutor which seems to be fitting into the shoes of Faber who was the protagonist’s teacher in the literary version. She shows him the way to the book people who keep themselves concealed in the woods outside the domain of the urban life.
While there are no women characters present by the end of the story in the novel by Ray Bradbury, in the cinematic version, the women play pivotal roles in the reconstruction of the society in the world.
However, both the book and the film address the burning issues of the world society and focuses on the roles of the authorities which have taken the omnipotent control in their hands. The artistic expressions delve deep into the fact how the people have been dislocated from their cultural roots and histories to become the hapless victims of the propagandist approach of the governments and the helm. Guy Montag emerges as the epitome of human spirit who triumphs over the odds to establish that the knowledge and relevance of the books can never get undermined by the technological boom which afflicts the world society.