Faber turns on the TV news, and they hear that a new Mechanical Hound, followed by a helicopter camera crew, has been sent out after Montag.
Faber plans to take a bus out of the city to visit his printer friend as soon as possible. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.
Montag does not feel particularly angry at her, however; his feelings for her are only pity and regret. This part of the novel is dominated by the final confrontation between Montag and Beatty. Montag remains emotionally detached in this section. He enjoys burning his own house as much as he enjoyed burning those of others, and he begins to agree with Beatty that fire is removing his problems.
He imagines Mildred and his whole previous life under the ashes, and feels that he is really far away and that his body is dead. Beatty is described as no longer human and no longer known to Montag when he catches fire. Again, like so many other things in the novel, fire has two contradictory meanings at once.
Murder is, after all, a far worse crime than book burning. Only later does Montag acknowledge what he has done and feel some remorse for his actions. Montag is not as different from Mildred, Beatty, and others as he thinks. In this section, he confides in Faber that he has been going around all his life doing one thing and feeling another, an unconscious dualism that resembles the conflicted psyches of Mildred and Beatty. Also, when he and Faber watch the sensationalist TV news coverage of his escape and the chase, the possibility of watching the unfolding drama on TV fascinates Montag, and he finds all the glitz and tabloid glamour he has inspired somewhat flattering.
If he is killed on TV, he wonders if he could sum up his whole life in a few words in the brief moments before his death so as to make an impact on the people watching. With Faber screaming in his ear to escape, Montag experiences a moment of doubt when Beatty reduces Montag's book knowledge to pretentiousness: "Why don't you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob?
Go ahead now, you secondhand literateur, pull the trigger. The meaning of Montag's utterance is open to speculation. At first glance, this statement is about passion: If the firemen have to burn books, they should know the subjects of the books and what information they contain. Or possibly, burning shouldn't be done simply as a mindless job that one does out of habit, but should be done out of political and ideological convictions.
Given the context, however, Montag says his line with the implication that Beatty was wrong to encourage burning when he, Beatty, knew the value of books. As he turns the flamethrower on Beatty, who collapses to the pavement like a "charred wax doll," you can note the superb poetic justice in this action. Beatty always preached to Montag that fire was the solution to everyone's problems "Don't face a problem, burn it," Beatty told him and Beatty, himself, is burned as a solution to Montag's problem.
Note once again, that in describing Beatty's death, Bradbury uses the image of a wax doll. The imagery of the wax doll is thus used in Fahrenheit to describe both Beatty and Millie. By using this comparison, Bradbury shows that Beatty and Millie do not appear to be living things; they fit the mold made by a dystopian society. As a result, Beatty is charred and destroyed by the fire that gave purpose and direction to his own life. Although Montag, who is now a fugitive, feels justified in his actions, he curses himself for taking these violent actions to such an extreme.
His discontent shows that he is not a vicious killer, but a man with a conscience. While Montag stumbles down the alley, a sudden and awesome recognition stops him cold in his tracks: "In the middle of the crying Montag knew it for the truth.
Beatty had wanted to die. He had just stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there, joking, needling, thought Montag, and the thought was enough to stifle his sobbing and let him pause for air. Montag suddenly sees that, although he always assumed that all firemen were happy, he has no right to make this assumption any longer. Although Beatty seemed the most severe critic of books, he, in fact, thought that outlawing individual thinking and putting a premium on conformity stifled a society.
Beatty was a man who understood his own compromised morality and who privately admired the conviction of people like Montag. In a strange way, Beatty wanted to commit suicide but was evidently too cowardly to carry it out. Bradbury illustrates the general unhappiness and despondency of certain members of society three times before Beatty's incident: Millie's near-suicide with the overdose of sleeping pills; the oblique reference to the fireman in Seattle, who "purposely set a Mechanical Hound to his own chemical complex and let it loose"; and the unidentified woman who chose immolation along with her books.
People in Montag's society are simply not happy. Their desire for death reflects a social malaise of meaningless and purposelessness. When war is finally declared, the hint of doom, which has been looming on the horizon during the entire novel, now reaches a climax. This new development serves as another parallel to the situation in which Montag finds himself.
Montag sees his former life fall apart as the city around him faces a battle in which it will also be destroyed. As Montag runs, his wounded leg feels like a "chunk of burnt pine log" that he is forced to carry "as a penance for some obscure sin.
The penance Montag must pay is the result of all his years of destruction as a fireman. Even though the pain in his leg is excruciating, he must overcome even more daunting obstacles before he achieves redemption. Unexpectedly, the seemingly simple task of crossing the boulevard proves to be his next obstacle. The "beetles" travel at such high speeds that they are likened to bullets fired from invisible rifles. Bradbury enlists fire imagery to describe these beetles: Their headlights seem to burn Montag's cheeks, and as one of their lights bears down on him, it seems like "a torch hurtling upon him.
After Montag and Faber make their plans for escape, the reader witnesses Faber's devotion to the plans that he and Montag have made. In choosing to flee to St. Louis to find an old printer friend, Faber also places his life in jeopardy to ensure the immortality of books. Montag imagines his manhunt as a "game," then as a "circus" that "must go on," and finally as a "one-man carnival.
When Montag escapes to the river, the imagery of water, a traditional symbol of regeneration and renewal and, for Carl Jung, transformation , coupled with Montag's dressing in Faber's clothes, suggests that Montag's tale of transformation is complete. He has shed his past life and is now a new person with a new meaning in life. His time spent in the water, accompanied by the escape from the city, serves as an epiphany for Montag's spirit: "For the first time in a dozen years [that is, since he became a fireman] the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire.
He thinks about his dual roles as man and fireman. While floating in the river, Montag suddenly realizes the change that has taken place: "He felt as if he had left a stage behind him and many actors.
He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new. The stage imagery implies that Montag actually realized that he was merely acting for a long period of his life, and that he is now entering into an entirely new stage of life. Montag emerges from the river transformed. Now in the country, his first tangible sensation — "the dry smell of hay blowing from some distant field" — stirs strong melancholic emotions.
Though Montag may be a man who has trouble articulating his feelings, one learns that he is a man of deep emotions. The entire episode of him leaving the river and entering the countryside is evocative of a spiritual transformation. He has sad thoughts of Millie, who is somewhere back in the city, and has a sensuous fantasy of Clarisse; both of which are now associated with the city and a life that he no longer lives, to which he can never return.
Whereas the city was metaphorically associated with a stifling and oppressive technology, the countryside is a place of unbounded possibility, which at first terrifies Montag: "He was crushed by darkness and the look of the country and the million odors on a wind that iced the body.
The forest into which he stumbles is rampant with life; he imagines "a billion leaves on the land" and is overcome by the natural odors that confront him.
To underscore the strangeness of this new environment, Bradbury makes Montag stumble across a railroad track that had, for Montag, "a familiarity. Because he is most familiar and comfortable with something associated with urban life the railroad tracks , Montag remembers that Faber told him to follow them — "the single familiar thing, the magic charm he might need a little while, to touch, to feel beneath his feet" — as he moves on.
When he sees the fire in the distance, the reader sees the profound change that Montag has undergone. Montag sees the fire as "strange," because "It was burning, it was warming. Curiously, Granger was expecting Montag, and when he offers him "a small bottle of colorless fluid," Montag takes his final step toward transformation. Not only is Montag garbed in clothes that are not his, but the chemical that Granger offers him changes his perspiration. Literally, Montag becomes a different man.
When Montag expresses his prior knowledge of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Granger is happy to tell Montag of his new purpose in life: Montag will become that book. Not only does Montag learn the value of a book, but he also learns that he can "become the book. Talking with Granger and the others around the fire, Montag gains a sense of warmth and personal well-being and recovers a sense of faith in the future. He begins gaining an understanding of the fire of spirit, life, and immortality, as well as forgetting the fire that destroys.
Notice that when the campfire is no longer necessary, every man lends a hand to help put it out. This action is further proof of the things that Granger has been telling Montag: Group effort is necessary if a positive goal is ever to be reached. When the commune moves south due to the war threat , Montag associates Millie with the city, but he admits to Granger that, strangely, he doesn't "feel much of anything" for her.
That part of his life, as well as everything relating to the city, seems distant and unreal. He feels sorry for her because he intuitively knows that she will probably be killed in the war. He is also ashamed, because in all their years together, he was able to offer her nothing.
As the city is destroyed "as quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished" , Montag's thoughts return to Millie. It is the message the writer is trying to convey through the story.
Often the theme of a story is a broad message about life. In Fahrenheit , Montag is not in love with Clarisse in a conventionally romantic sense, but he does seem to love her free spirit and her unusual way of looking at the world.
Essentially, Montag is not in love with Mildred because they are on two different wavelengths and do not share the same interests, thoughts, or views regarding their society, entertainment, and literature.
The alternative is a little more interesting: Mildred is deeply unhappy. In a sense, it is appropriate to call Clarisse antisocial. She does not want to do all the things that are normal for that society. Therefore, she is antisocial.
But this is ironic because she is really more social in our way of thinking than any of the people who actually fit in to her society. Clarisse is also afraid of kids her own age because six of her friends have been shot within the last year, and ten died in car wrecks.
Clearly, teenagers are not monitored or held accountable for their actions. To Clarisse, school amounts to the teachers feeding answers to the students like pablum to a baby. Ray Bradbury alludes to events in history, mythological tales, literary pieces, and biblical stories in Fahrenheit to provide a point of reference for how the characters in the book represent the readers in their reactions to events and literature.
Skip to content What is the significance of the title burning bright in Fahrenheit ? What is burning bright an allusion to? Burning Bright This is an allusion to the Keystone Cops, a series of silent films made in the s featuring slapstick stories about policemen. Why is Mildred a bad wife? Why was Clarisse considered anti social? What did Montag identify as a path to safety? What is an example of an allusion in Fahrenheit ? What is the symbolism of the title of Part III?
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