Comparing The Old Man and the Sea and Fahrenheit 451

            In my last blog, I contrasted The Old Man and the Sea and Fahrenheit 451.  I decided to split the differences and similarities up because there is so many details to take in and this way after reading all the differences, you can digest what you read before you get the dose of similarities.

            One of the similarities that I felt stood out was that each of the main characters had a younger person to keep them grounded.  In The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago has a younger boy named Manolin to help him carry his boat items but also to keep the old man alive.  “The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden box with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft” (Hemingway 15).  While out at sea, Santiago could not stop thinking about Manolin back home.  “Then he said aloud, ‘I wish I had the boy.  To help me and to see this’” (Hemingway 48).  Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451 met a young woman named Clarisse McClellan.  “The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. [...] The trees overhead made a great sound of letting down their dry rain” (Bradbury 5).  Bradbury used a whole paragraph where he described in depth of what Clarisse looked like at that moment.  When the going got tough in Guy Montag’s life, he thought about Clarisse. 

            Another similar detail in both novels is having that significant other in your life.  Santiago was married but his wife died years earlier.  He loved and enjoyed the presence of his wife.  Guy Montag is currently married to Mildred or Millie.  Although he loves her, he does not care about much about her. 

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991. Print.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea. New York: Scribner, 1952. Print.