Fahrenheit 451: Part 3 - “Burning Bright”
Episode 46
Professor Pipes burns brightly to the finish line of Ray Bradbury’s scorching literary classic: Fahrenheit 451! Hopefully this series of videos has kindled (or rekindled) a love of reading and perhaps even sparked some conversation!
TRIGGER WARNINGS: Murder, Suicide, Death
Transcript
Introduction:
Hello and welcome to Piper’s Paraphrases! I’m Professor Pipes and today it’s time for “Burning Bright.” No, no, Cooper! I’m talking about Part 3 of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: “Burning Bright.” But before we get to it, let’s review what’s been going on so far.
Previously:
Previously in Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag was not doing so hot - and I’m not just talking about his job of burning books as a fireman. After inspiration struck in the form of a curious teenaged neighbor, Guy suddenly [sung] wanted much more than this dystopian life… Anyway, he had secretly been stashing some books, and decided to read them before his boss forced him to burn them. But that wasn’t enough! He also wanted to copy his books and frame the other firemen for hiding books, taking the system down from the inside with the help of a former English professor, Faber. Unfortunately, before they could do that, Guy got a bit triggered by his wife’s selfish friends and started reading to them before heading to work like nothing happened. Once there, his boss gave him a literary, verbal beatdown before the alarm sounded and they headed out to the next home to burn - Montag’s!
Plot Summary:
Part 3 starts out where we left off - outside Montag’s house. Guy watches his wife Mildred leave him, sadder about her parlor wall tvs being destroyed than losing him. In fact, she’s the one who turned him in. Rude! Then Captain Beatty tells Montag to burn the books himself, and he can’t escape because they’d send the Mechanical Hound after him if he attempted to run. Ruh roh. Once inside, he first sets fire to everything else in his life - his bedroom, his dining room, the horrible parlor room walls - and he enjoys it, not because he’s excited for a sweet insurance payoff, but because he’s destroying the evidence of his purposeless, unhappy life. Beatty tells Montag he’s going to be arrested and then starts hitting him! Didn’t he ever learn not to kick a dog when it’s down!? In fact, he knocks the radio that Montag was using to communicate with Faber out of his ear, listens to it, and says they’ll track down this conspirator and pay him a visit, too! Dun dun dun! And that’s when Montag snaps and, after being taunted a bit, he burns Beatty to death. Well that escalated quickly. Then he gets attacked by the Mechanical Hound, which injects his leg with some sort of anesthetic before he burns it to robot death too, grabs his remaining books, and limps off into the sunset. The end. Just kidding - he’s totally a fugitive now and has to deal with the consequences of what he just did, and although he’s overcome by guilt and sadness, he decides to head to Faber’s place.
On the way, he’s almost hit by a car of teens who were clearly trying to kill him for fun. Kids being kids, you know! Then he sneaks to the home of one of his fellow firemen, stashes his books, and then calls in the alarm, reporting him for having books! Ooooh sneaky! Montag makes it to Faber’s and tells him about everything - killing his captain, his wife leaving him, framing his coworker - and boy is Faber excited! Faber advises Montag to follow the river and then the railroad tracks, and hopefully he’ll run into some rogue book lovers who live in the woods. Actually, that sounds pretty great… Meanwhile, Faber promises to leave town at 5 AM and go make a copy of the Bible that Montag had left with him before. As they’re plotting — ALERT ALERT ALERT — there’s a tv broadcast warning people to be on the lookout for Guy Montag, and informing them that a new Mechanical Hound is on his scent trail. Uh oh. Should’ve showered. Montag gives Faber some advice on how to cover up his scent in and around the house and then borrows some of Faber’s clothes in a suitcase and whiskey for later on. Um, dude, drinking ain’t gonna solve your problems! As he’s running away, Montag watches the Hound’s progress on the tvs of neighbors and is happy to see that, though it stops temporarily at Faber’s place, it passes it! Yay! As Montag is running toward the river, he can hear the announcer on everyone’s televisions asking them to step outside to look for him in three, two, wonderful, he makes it to the river, wades in, changes into Faber’s clothes, and pours the alcohol all over himself to cover his scent. Oh! That’s what it was for. Then he floats away.
But we’re not done yet!
Eventually he washes ashore and uh oh - he’s being watched! It’s the hound! Oh dear! Wait - that’s it; it’s just a dear. Montag is amazed by the stillness, the quiet, the smells of nature! He finds the railroad tracks and begins following them, struck by the sudden assurance that Clarisse once walked this same path. I guess we’ll never know… After a while he sees a fire and heads toward it, finding a group of men who actually talk about real things, and they invite him to join them, knowing full well who he is. Tsk! Harboring a fugitive! The leader of the group, Granger, gives him a drink that apparently changes his scent so the Hound will never be able to track him. I mean, sure. Why not. Granger tells Montag that the searchers clearly already lost track of him and will be using a scapegoat to “catch Montag” to keep the masses comfortable and, sure enough, they watch a little portable tv and that is exactly what happens. Poor random dude. Real Montag is introduced to the other members of the group, three professors, a reverend, and Granger himself, an author. Montag worries that he has nothing to offer them, other than a little bit of the Book of Ecclesiastes but he’s pretty sure he forgot it already. Granger ain’t worried, saying that they have ways of making people remember… But, you know, less ominous. He then explains that all of the members of this group are books. What? I thought they were people! Oh! It seems that they have each memorized works of literature and now serve as those books in the hopes that someday, after the war destroys their country, people will want to read, and they’ll be able to put those books back on paper where they belong. I’m pretty sure I know every line from Friends. Does that count? Apparently there are thousands of these living books out there, just waiting for the right moment. As the group travels downstream a bit, they hear jets zooming overhead, and talk about loss and death and having a purpose and boom! The war begins and ends in an instant. That was fast. Montag thinks about Clarisse, already dead, Faber, already out of town, and Mildred, there and now gone. Suddenly he remembers how they met just as the shock of the bombs knocks all the men to the ground. And lying there he remembers more of the Book of Ecclesiastes, repeating it to himself. Eventually they get up and talk about what just happened. Granger says that humanity is like a phoenix, burning itself up and rising from the ashes. And as Montag begins to remember more and more of the Bible, they head back upstream to find and help the survivors.
Characterization:
In Part 1, Montag didn’t really do much of anything. In Part 2, he started making changes, but was still mostly following the directions of others. Now in Part 3, he’s actually his own boss - and I don’t just mean because Beatty is dead. Montag makes the decision to kill Beatty to save his friend. He decides to frame his fellow fireman. Then he tells Faber what to do for a change, telling him to go make copies of the Bible and explaining how to save himself from the Hound. He even comes up with his own escape plan. Montag also remembers more of his past, thinking vividly of a childhood visit to the country and recalling how and where he met Mildred. So as he takes more control of his present, he has more awareness of his past, making him a complete character for the first time.
Mildred even makes a choice, but it’s a passive one, as usual. She reports Montag and then leaves him, dooming herself in the process because of her inability to change and grow like him. But Montag isn’t mad at her for her betrayal; he pities her and is sad that she will never have a purpose and never experience the world like he can.
We learn some startling information about Beatty in this part of the book, too. He becomes much more aggressive, literally punching Montag while threatening him with jail time. However, there is an even darker reason for this behavior. When Montag points his flamethrower at Beatty, Beatty eggs him on, saying “pull the trigger.” And as Montag thinks back on the murder, he realizes, “Beatty wanted to die.” It seems like Beatty saw a lot of himself in Montag, but unlike Montag, Beatty chose the wrong side, deciding to continue destroying thought and maintaining the status quo of society, and that was eating at him, especially as he saw Montag’s choices in stark contrast with his own. To quote Harvey Dent, “you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Well despite his perhaps heroic interest in books, Beatty certainly became Montag’s villain, and he died that way, too.
Granger is really a spot of hope in the bleak and unsure landscape of the future. He accepts Montag for who he is, actively helps him, and makes him realize that he has a purpose and something to give to the world. He also has a clear understanding of humanity, pointing out that we tend to destroy ourselves with our own selfishness or stupidity, but then we rise up again. However, he knows that we can recognize our mistakes and he hopes that “someday we’ll stop making the… funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.” Granger is also kind of like the ideal audience of this book, hopeful for the future, but recognizing that we need to “build a mirror factory… and take a long look in them.” We need to recognize ourselves and our society in this book, take a long look in the mirror, and make a change.
Analysis:
Now let’s talk about some of the key themes from this section. First up is Autonomy and Agency. As I mentioned in the characters’ section, Montag has finally really started to make his own decisions by the end of the story. In fact, he even admits that, previously, “I went around doing one thing and feeling another” but now he is finally ready to join those two together. This section still starts off with him feeling somewhat removed from his decision-making, though. Even when he first turns the flamethrower towards Beatty, Montag “glanced to his hands to see what new thing they had done” seeing his mind as separate from his hands. However, once he kills Beatty, he really takes ownership of his life and his choices, at times regretting his decisions, at times sure of his choices, but fully in control of them. In fact, once he is in nature, away from technology and society for the first time, he also becomes “fully aware of his entire body, his face, his mouth, his eyes” for the first time in the story. He is no longer disconnected, separating his mind from his body, and so he is finally aware, and alive. Similarly, when they have a new plan and are ready to act, Faber says that he feels “alive for the first time in years.” The ability to take action makes them more aware of the world and frees them…
…which actually brings us to our next topic: Purpose and Individuality. Granger describes his grandfather as someone who “did things to the world” and “was individual.” Unique. Something this society is not a fan of. Granger’s grandfather taught him that “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies,” and it doesn’t matter what that thing is. The important part is that you had an impact on the world, which means you’re never really gone. Montag worries that he has no purpose, since all he gave to the world was ashes, but that’s not the case anymore. Now that he has something unique - his knowledge of the Book of Ecclesiastes, he also has a purpose. He will be able to pass down his knowledge, leaving a permanent imprint on society and future generations, like the unique Clarisse left an imprint on Montag himself.
Finally, I can’t finish the story without talking, yet again, about Fire, especially since that’s where this section begins: the fire at Montag’s house, and it is both destructive and productive. Montag finds himself enjoying burning again, but this time it’s because he isn’t who he was before. His home, his belongings, don’t represent the person he has become, and so the fire is like a rebirth for him. Beatty argues that the beauty of fire is that it “destroys responsibility and consequences,” and Montag almost agrees, but he says of Beatty, “You always said, don’t face a problem, burn it. Well, now I’ve done both.” He actively faces the problem of Beatty by, well, burning him, and he also burns away the problems of his old life “because he wanted to change everything.” Montag has been reborn in the fire, like the phoenix Granger talks about. In fact, there’s a little hint at that symbolism when Montag burns his books, since they’re described like birds, “their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.” And after this rebirth, Montag doesn’t want to burn anymore, especially since “The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time.” Time already destroys enough, and Montag doesn’t want to destroy anymore. However, fire isn’t only about destruction. After all, this section is called “Burning Bright,” which implies a more positive effect of fire. And that’s exactly what is going on when he comes upon Granger and his crew. For the first time, he sees the fire as something different, because “It was not burning. It was warming.” Fire can help people, and this changed fireman can, too.
Food for Thought:
Before I memorize and then burn this book, I’d like to leave you with some food for thought. Consider these questions as you reflect upon the whole novel.
First, looking at Montag’s actions, do the ends justify the means?
Second, Montag has memorized the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible, which talks a lot about man’s place and purpose in the world. Why do you think Bradbury chose to have Montag memorize this specific piece?
Third, how are Beatty and Montag the same and how are they different? Why didn’t Montag follow the same path as Beatty?
Fourth, we learn more and more about the war in each section, culminating in the actual destruction of the city in Part 3. How is the war symbolic? What is its purpose in the novel?
Finally, I’ve mentioned more than a few times that this is a dystopia. However, the society is also very concerned with “peace” and “equality” and offers up lots of opportunities for comfort and entertainment. So that begs the question, what separates a dystopia from a utopia?
Thanks for watching this episode of Piper’s Paraphrases. Now go forth, read a bunch, and be good people.
