- “So it was the hand that started it all . . . His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms . . . His hands were ravenous.”
Response: This sentence epitomizes Montag’s unquenchable thirst for the theft of books. I can relate to this desire. My whole life, I have both loved to read, and yearned for what I can’t have. Maybe it’s just basic human instinct, but I compulsively want what is kept from me. If I lived in the totalitarian world of “Fahrenheit 451”, I would instinctively want to get my hands on the knowledge books possessed.
Whether from my rebellious nature or love of reading I can’t say, but I would risk anything to get my hands on anything not censored. I believe Montag has a similar mindset. His whole life he has been restricted from obtaining true knowledge, and once he finally witnesses it he becomes addicted. The pursuit of learning is an addictive route, and I feel as if Montag can’t resist the allure of it.
- “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal . . . A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind.”
Response: The sentence above was spoken by Captain Beatty toward the end of “The Hearth and the Salamander”. The morally complex world of “Fahrenheit 451” leaves me wondering the true intentions of certain characters, and the type of person I would be. Beatty is a far more nuanced and layered character upon multiple readings, and I feel like he represents a lot of society. While he is first introduced as an antagonist, it’s revealed he was once an avid reader before he had a fall of faith in books.
In the paradoxical society of “Fahrenheit 451”, I believe most people would experience a similar loss of faith. Beatty is one of my favorite characters, as it is hinted he is not as narrow-minded as one would think. It is implied that he didn’t actually choose his job after a fall from faith in books, as he claims, but rather to enable himself to gain legal access to books through his position of authority. To me, Beatty is also a tragic character, a regretful former reader corrupted by the toxic world he lives in. He reminds me of a lot of people I’ve known in my life, who haven’t been able to rise above their surroundings.
- “Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.”
Response: I love this quote. It symbolizes what books are: authentic accounts or experiences. They aren’t heavily censored; they are pure details. In the broken world of “Fahrenheit 451”, books, and general knowledge, are banned completely. To me, knowledge is a basic human necessity. Without it, humans cannot live up to their potential. Society cannot censor knowledge, for knowledge is life.
Without it, we cannot truly exist. That’s why the people in the novel are so mindless and robotic; they’re not truly living, just surviving. Montag reminds me a lot of myself: I love the pursuit of knowledge and live in a society that encourages learning. Montag, on the other hand, lives in a totalitarian state in which he must break the law to obtain knowledge. According to Faber, Montag is really in search of “quality,” which the professor defines as “texture”—the details of life, that is, authentic experience. Without these things, Montag will never be truly “human” again.
- “It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. . . . It’s a mystery. . . . Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences . . . clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.”
Response: In the novel, Beatty speaks these lines to Montag right before his death. I feel like this sentence is representative of their society’s devotion to cleanliness, censorship, and destruction. The fire is everything their society believes in: burning away all it touches, just as their society erases any knowledge it finds.
While Beatty was a complex character, I always knew he would die at some point in the novel. He was a product of his broken world: a broken man with broken ideals. He was once good, just like the world around him. But over time, he was corrupted. I also feel like this was a turning point for Montag’s character, showing the lengths he was willing to go to reject his society.
- “The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time . . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!”
Response: This passage is from the end of the novel, while Montag is floating down the river following the atomic destruction of the city. While the ending is bittersweet due to the destruction of most of society, I felt it was fitting. This passage shows the freedom of thought that Montag so desperately wanted and has now achieved. I love the symbolism in this passage, and I feel like it symbolizes my thoughts on the novel as a whole. Montag comes to the conclusion that the sun burns time, and should he and the firemen continue to burn, there will eventually be nothing left.
The only way towards a happier future is to reject the destruction and censorship that heavily pervaded the world before its “cleansing”. I don’t believe the fire was always the enemy, however. While reading of the destruction, I believe some of the imagery represents their society as a phoenix. To begin anew, they must be burned to the ground, only for the remnants to rise from the ash and become something better. Fire both ended their society and gave birth to the next. I feel as if many in real life could learn important lessons from the themes of this novel.
