Fahrenheit 451
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Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury takes place in 2053, in a world whose societys goal in life is self-indulgent pleasure and abandonment of self-control. By this point in time, books are obsolete. Books are seen as a source of unhappiness. The ideas in books are considered sacrilege and firemen are employed to burn and destroy them whenever discovered. The fireman have a phoenix disc on their chests. The phoenix is a mythological said to live for 500, 1461 or for 12594 years. At the end of its life-cycle it catches fire and is reduced to ashes, from which a young phoenix arises. The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe. In Fahrenheit 45 the Phoenix symbolizes rebirth, Montag, Faber and Society all are “reborn”.
Montag After coming home from assignment in which the book owner, instead of getting out of the house, strikes a match and kills he self along with her books rather than carry on living without them. This leads Montag to think that theres something in books: “There must be something in books, things we cant imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You dont stay for nothing.” “She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burnt her. Thats water under the bridge. No not water; fire. You ever seen a burnt house? It smolders for days. Well this firell last me the rest of my life.”(51) This causes Montag to be “reborn” from all the books hes burnt, he becomes obsessed with books. He thinks that books might make him happy again.
Faber is the former English professor who never stood up against the eradication of books: “you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. Im one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when on one would listen to the “guilty,” but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.”(82) But when Montag finally “convinces” or threatens to follow through with the plan Faber he gets more into it: “To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason. The salamander devours his tail! Ho, God!”(85) Fabers dream of books returning and the extinction firemen is “reborn.” Faber gives Montag a bug (covert listening device) to help him with the plan to eradicate the fireman.
After the city is vaporized by the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb, Montag and