Fahrenheit 451

As soon as the call comes they are on their way. City lights fly by, tires screech to a sudden stop, and men file out of the car to complete their commands under the eerie watchful eye of superiors. The stench of kerosene fills the air. The men come running with the equipment, and among them are the tools to complete their mission. Grasping the fire hose as a child holds dear to his toy, they are ready. The papers are drenched and the flames are ready as they go in for the kill. In burning books, there were those who believed that they were saving such small minded people from the dangers that some from the perplexity of books. As insane as it is, such a world exists for a man named Guy Montag in the fictional novel Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury. This darker, communistic America shows us that controlling the knowledge of your people will not control your people, and in doing so, the opposite of what we would consider control could kick in; such actions would only lead us to obtain a state of ultimate intervening terror and a contagious crisis, spreading like wildfire -- impossible to impede.

The number 451 is worn on their clothes, their helmets and their gear. The number 451 is precisely the amount of degrees Fahrenheit which the firemen need to complete their job. The number 451 is the temperature at which books will burn -- a number so vital to the existence of the firemen. A new breed of firemen, ravenous with the hunger to burn, a species of firemen quite different than the one of those we are used to. The government is using the firemen as a hammer -- a mere tool. This hammer pounds it in to the brains of everyone, if you have books you will die, your books will die. The hammer will try to keep everyone straight -- on the right path -- but the hammer also burns. Burns the lives and dreams in books, the existence of books is a threat to us all. The government will tell you that they are protecting you "you don't face a problem, you burn it," (pg. 121) but really here, the government, this dictatorship is the problem; the government's only enemy is itself. For tell me what dangers come with the knowledge that books have to offer, the correct answer is none. Yes, some things are better left unsaid, but we cannot be afraid to face the problem at hand. The government has messed up and now the people pay for the government's insecurities. Controlling their knowledge affects the people only in a negative way, and people committing suicide and breaking out in war is not something to be considered as control. Even Montag, a fireman, a hammer, agreed "our civilization is flinging itself to pieces."(pg. 87) Where did the government take a serious turn for the worse? Communism, and if it works nowhere, why would it work in the country that stands for all that is free?

These acts of burning are really belittling people and their intelligence in general, for there are very few times when danger comes in books. The government wants them to know as little as possible; they want people to forget the war-torn world they live in and go sit and chat with "family" and stare at the walls of televisions that completely surrounding them – an overpowering, yet false reality – acting as an enclosure around them. The people are under the government’s complete shield, but it is only a shield of knowledge, shielding them from what they really need to know. The government cannot shield them from the results of this dictatorship, and all are affected by the raging wars and constant catastrophes that take place on a daily basis. If they ever did find the time to figure out what is right, it would still be too late to change what has already been done. So, instead of learning from things in the past, they continue to carry out the same actions, they continue to commit the same mistakes. The people will never know the truth, for it is burned with the books, and those who thought they knew the truth once, now never know what to believe. They would rather be consumed in their own world and pretend like they don’t notice the fire outside and the beady eyes that seem to be everywhere. Beatty owned a pair of those eyes; he was one that altered and disfigured the way to look at books. He spun a web of confusion around Montag as he had with anyone else who had the slightest idea of keeping a book, but Montag was too strong for him; the temptation was stronger, and Montag broke away from the firemen, the lies and destruction. But what had made Montag’s temptation this strong? He had been around books for years and years and it had never bothered him before. “What we resist persists,” quote Carl Jung, and what Montag has always been around is going to be the hardest to forget.
Clarisse was of the smallest chapters of Montag’s life. She was in and out in a hurry but left the biggest footprints in his heart, and she taught him the greatest lessons. She had initially sparked the idea in Montag’s head of breaking away from the burning of books, but she wasn’t the one who really got him to turn away from the firemen completely. One night on the job changed his whole life; the woman that died with her books. What was it that made those books so special that you would die with them? He was sick with that thought – the image – ever since a significant fire and a significant death that lead to a significant up rise, for Montag, against the firemen -- against the government. So whatever it was that was so special contained in those books, contents to die for, Montag was going to find out, and not even Beatty was going to stop him. Yet their world was so horrible, that during Beatty’s last moments of life, “Beatty had wanted to die.” (pg. 122) They both for what they wanted, but that didn’t stop the world from falling apart like they knew it would in the end. But the world didn’t have to die this way; it was a premature death.
At the end of the chaos, smoke and dust collide in the air leaving little room for you to rise from the safety of the ground. The taste is significant as it clings to you tighter than the particles thick in the air; not a foreign taste to you. The aroma feels of another storm yet to come, and this sensation brings you to another realization. Like the storm yet to come, this war is not over, for the age of the firemen have yet to die. They will die out one day, when the rest of the world comes down with it, or when the rest of the world is already gone. “People are often like torches, blazing until they whiff out,” (pg. 11); torches have a short lifespan, so we will too if a communism breaks out like this one in America. And if you were to attack the problem Montag’s way, he would say, “If we have to burn, let’s take a few more with us.” (pg. 122)