Fahrenheit 451

The Quest for Knowledge

Author's Note: In this piece, I tried again to use a poetic introduction technique. I discussed the differences between Beatty and Faber and what they represent in this novel. Beatty and Faber are very much opposites, but they are both trying to help Montag find what he is missing in his life, and they both strongly believe that each of them are right.

The search, searching, the endless search to find something; something that you don't know, but you just know it's missing. Lacking more like, a component in your life that is simply not there, leaving a gaping hole. It pulls you into listening to what the walls are telling you, to possibly fill the hole. It grabs you into wanting and desiring more and more. A hole like this grew into Montag's body and he's beginning to discover what he is really lacking in his life. On his quest to fill this gap, he's met two people  who propose to him opposing opinions on what he is missing in his life.

It all revolves around books, and the lack of them. One day,  Montag realized how much torment he'd been causing to people after witnessing a women being burned alive. He decided he couldn’t take it anymore and took the next day off. While he was at home, Beatty, another fireman, came to visit him. In this story, Beatty represents someone who is seen by the people as wise, but really all of his knowledge comes from what the government has placed in his head. He saw that Montag had begun to question his career and even noticed that he’d stolen a book. To remind Montag, he told him the story of how books were outlawed. While telling the story, Beatty tried to convince him that the books were useless and all they did was provoke the thoughts of the people about unnecessary things. With a large population, there is no need for everyone to think as individuals, he believed, give all the people the same information and they will all think the same things and act as one. Beatty said that books just stirred up the society and caused debates and arguments. "The bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers … No wonder books stopped selling." ( p 87)

Montag understood this concept, but he still didn’t feel like it was the explanation he was looking for. He believed that he needed the books, and that they were necessary instead expendable. One previous day Montag had met a retired English professor in the park. He remembered how this English professor talked about books in a peculiar way,  and Montag decided to go visit him again. Faber, the professor, was scared of the government and in the book he stands for everyone who knows what is right and needs to be changed but is too cowardly to do anything. "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that used to be in books." (p 110) Faber tried to explain this to Montag; books are just pages with writing on them and they can be burned, but it’s the idea of people recording their thoughts and discoveries for others to see. It’s the idea of sharing knowledge and being connected to others through that. The government does not want the people to share their ideas because as individuals, people are less of a threat, but together they could overrule what the government is trying to infiltrate into their minds. If they shared and built upon each others thoughts they could go farther than they would have believed imaginable.

"So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless." (p 111) We do not want our flaws to have light shed on them nor did the people in the novel, we want them to be kept in the shadows, but the only way to correct them or justify them is to assess them in the light. Books challenge us to examine our lives, to go above and beyond, and to ultimately change our lifestyles. It’s the ideas and thoughts of others that we need to fill ourselves up, the true and genuine knowledge.

Beatty and Faber displayed two very different images for Montag, and ultimately us. Beatty won by forcing Montag to think and believe that books create chaos, while Faber silently allowed Montag to see what he needs that is inside the books. It’s not just Montag who is trying to find answers, we all have our own holes that we try to fill, too. We resort to many different methods to fill ourselves up, yet most of the time they make us feel even more empty than before. Much like Montag, we have to choose the path we will take. Will we except that knowledge is useless or will we embrace that we need it? The world in Fahrenheit 451 is not very different from where our culture is headed today; many people are getting lost in the new technology of the day and not truly taking the time to connect with others. Bradbury is trying to warn us through Faber that we need to be united with one another because together we can accomplish much more.

The Burning Fire

Author's Note: This is a response to the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I tried to use a different introduction technique making it an extended metaphor for my thesis. I am writing about how the main character Montag has began to realize that he is missing something in his life, books, but more specifically the knowledge that they provide.  

Blazing, hot flames filling our vision, scorching the atmosphere. Stealing our breath as we openly speak without care. There is no need for that type of sharing of knowledge. It burns everything, everything, everything to ashes. Nothing can stay. Emitting a deadly gas, the fire can only be stopped by a pure water, but only one dropped won't put it all out. More is needed, larger amounts of this rare substance for this fireproof world. Everything has been changed by the fire, and water is hard to come by.

Montag is at the verge of coming to realization that his world has been altered by the government. What he thought the meaning of life was, he's had to sacrifice for his job. Montag has went along his whole life not questioning why he burns books or why there would be a need to, until he meets a girl named Clarisse McClellan, and he realizes how thirsty he is for water.

Books provide knowledge and insight, they unlock new theories for us to explore, and they expose us to parts of the world we can only dream off. In this dystopic version of the world, books are considered pointless, and if you own any the firemen will come and  burn them to the ground. Because of the immense population, the government controls everyone's knowledge, and believes that if anyone has too much knowledge they are a threat. By doing this they are manipulating the people into thinking whatever they want them to because they know nothing else. Montag has been taught that it is okay to break into someone's house and burn their books to ashes all his life by the government. Until he met Clarisse, he had never even thought about what he was doing. Clarisse asked him one day if he was happy and Montag realized that he didn’t truly know if he was happy. Montag suddenly began to question everything about himself. He felt he had he forgotten what the meaning of life was, he felt that he had lost his true self to his job.

"You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred. Ask yourself, what do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these." (p 89)

Often in life we compromise what we believe is true, what we believe is right, and what we believe is noble. Even though the population seems to convey the message that it's okay, we must ask ourselves what we say is okay and listen to our own thoughts instead of the thoughts that are constantly being put into our heads through the television, the internet, the radio, ect. Ray Bradbury warns us about this in the scene where Mildred is sitting in the living room watching her "family". They are saying absolutely nothing about nothing, yet she is being absorbed into it. She claims they're her family, yet she doesn't even know them. "The tevelisor is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you want to think and blasts it in. I must  be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protect, 'What nonsense!' " (p 112) Sometimes, we listen too much to what the world is saying and just accept it without really processing it. We can easily fill our minds with garbage and not even know it. We are often tricked into believing false things. In this world, we need to be the initiators of our own thoughts. The purpose of life is unique to each and every person and it is exclusively theirs. We cannot let anyone tell us what we are living for.

Truthfully, we do not need books to provide us with knowledge, we can gain knowledge elsewhere, it is idea of sharing our thoughts with each so that we can learn from one another's successes and failure. Without interacting with others we can feel lost, because though one person can possess an immense amount of knowledge, it is useless unless we work together and combine our knowledge. In this novel, everyone is forced into believing by the government that the purpose of life is to be happy; that no matter what they should just be entertained and have fun. Without books, nobody can oppose to this because they do not know better. In life we are not meant to just be happy, often we will be quite the opposite. We were meant for greater things. We were meant to use our knowledge to improve this world, but without insight, without meaning, we are useless.