He carries with him a substitute book to give Beatty in place of the Bible that he left with Faber. Montag dreads the meeting with Beatty, even though Faber promises to be with him via the two-way radio implanted in Montag's ear. Beatty tries to coax Montag into admitting his crime of stealing and reading books, but Faber is true to his word and supports Montag during Beatty's taunting.
Before Montag can respond to Beatty's tirade, the fire alarm sounds, and the firemen rush off to work. Ironically, Montag realizes that his own home is the firemen's target.
While Millie and Montag are reading, Clarisse's profound influence on Montag becomes obvious. In fact, Montag points out that "She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted. They hear "a faint scratching" outside the front door and "a slow, probing sniff, and exhalation of electric steam" under the doorsill.
Millie's reaction is "It's only a dog. The Mechanical Hound lurks outside, probably programmed by Beatty to collect evidence that he can use later against Montag. The Montags, however, can't ignore the sounds of bombers crossing the sky over their house, signaling the imminence of war.
Although no on knows the cause of the war or its origins, the country is filled with unrest, which is a parallel to the growing unrest and anger smoldering within Montag. Abandonment of reality has become uppermost in Millie's mind. When Montag speaks to her about the value and merit in books, she shrieks and condemns him for possessing the books.
Bradbury describes her as "sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat. This time, however, Millie carries the seeds of her own destruction. As stated earlier at the end of Part One, she can choose books and life.
But because she shuns books and the lessons that she can learn from them, Bradbury describes her as a doll that melts in its self-generated heat. Montag, on the other hand, wants to comprehend the information that the books give him.
More importantly, however, Montag realizes that he needs a teacher if he wants to fully understand the books' information. The person to whom Montag chooses to turn, Faber, "had been thrown out upon the world forty years ago when the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage.
He said to Montag, "I don't talk things , sir; I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive. While riding the subway to Faber's house, Montag experiences a moment of self-reflection. He discovers that his smile, "the old burnt-in smile," has disappeared. He recognizes his emptiness and unhappiness.
Moreover, he recognizes his lack of formal education — what he thinks is his essential ignorance. This sense of helplessness, of ineffectuality, of powerlessness, of his utter inability to comprehend what is in books, overwhelms him, and his mind flashes back to a time when he was a child on the seashore "trying to fill a sieve with sand.
He knows that in a few hours he must give this precious book to Beatty, so he attempts to read and memorize the scriptures — in particular, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. As he attempts to memorize the passages, however, a loud and brassy advertisement for "Denham's Dental Detergent" destroys his concentration.
Montag is trying to rebel, but he is confused because of his many mental blocks against nonconformity. He has never before deviated from the norm, and his attempts to establish an individual identity are continually frustrated.
Montag's flight to Faber's home is his only hope. The scene represents a man running for his life, which, in fact, Montag is doing, though he doesn't fully realize it yet. Nor does he know that he is already an outcast. He can never return to his former existence. His transformation is inevitable. Of significance in this part of the book is that Faber bears a close resemblance to Carl Jung's archetypal figure of the "old man.
Faber displays these qualities, and he, like Clarisse, is associated with the color white, symbolic of his spiritual nature: "He [Faber] and the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faded, with white in the vague blueness there.
White is also the opposite of the blackness of the burnt books and the dark ashes into which they are burned. Besides enlightening Montag, Faber expands on his philosophy about the use of the books, as well as about society in general. One can't help but think that Faber's discussion is close to Bradbury's own view, but of course, this assertion is simply speculation. Faber explains that books have "quality" and "texture," that they reveal stark reality, not only the pleasant aspect of life but also the bad aspects of life: "They show the pores in the face of life," and their society finds this discomforting.
Tragically, society has started programming thoughts: People are no longer allowed leisure time to think for themselves. Faber insists that leisure is essential to achieving proper appreciation of books. By "leisure," Faber doesn't mean "off hours," the time away from work, but simply ample time to think about things beyond one's self.
He then leaves the house, heading for the fire station. At the fire station, Montag notices that the Hound is missing, which makes him feel uneasy. He immediately goes in to Beatty and returns one of his stolen books, hoping to end the suspicions about him. Montag then plays cards with the other firemen.
Suddenly the alarm bell rings. To further convince them of the lie, Montag reads the ladies a poem out of the book and then proceeds to toss it in the incinerator; the women seem to believe the story.
Phelps is brought to tears, while Mrs. Bowles grows furious. Bradbury is clearly showing the power of poetry to transform even the most shallow of lives. After the ladies leave, Montag realizes the potential catastrophe he has nearly caused; he decides he must cover his tracks.
He hides some of his books outside and selects one to take to the station and turn in to Beatty. With Faber reassuring him the whole time through the ear device, Montag begins to execute his damage control. When Montag gets to the station, suspense once again builds. The absence of the Mechanical Hound is frightening and ominous. 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. First Name. Last Name. Email Address. Opt-in to important GradeSaver updates!
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