Fahrenheit 451

“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury is a classic tale that I hate to admit I have only just now read.  I also hate to admit that I saw the HBO movie before reading the book.  While Michael B. Johnson is a fantastic actor and the movie had an important message, the actor is not Montag and the movie is definitely not the book.  For those of you who have not read the book, READ THE BOOK!

I usually compare plots to bread and language to butter, but in this case I think the main character is the bread and the language of the supporting characters the butter that eventually builds the character into who and what he becomes and so the butter actually forms the bread.  This seemed like a very mysterious bread, so I googled “mysterious bread” thinking I might find some interesting matcha tea bread or some equally exotic flavors, but instead I found the lyrics to a Methodist Hymn that I am very familiar with:

O Thou who this mysterious bread
didst in Emmaus break,
return, herewith our souls to feed
and to thy followers speak. (Hymnsite)

While this is actually a Holy week hymn about taking communion and allowing our “hearts to see the Lord,” it seems relevant to Montag’s journey in self discovery and understanding as he began to see the light, as he began to hear and see the other side to a story he had never questioned he found something to follow and in turn found followers. 

He set out as a “fireman” burning all books and the ideas they represented that his captain, Beatty, and society deemed evil, the source of all unhappiness. Beatty said, “If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.” This very quote defines Beatty himself – unhappy, questioning, with no way to solve his discontent – almost like pushing his false ideals onto others relieves him slightly of his own dichotomous nature. 

And yet I think it is important to note that without dichotomy, we would not fully understand an idea without its counterpart.  While there seems to be a push today to limit speech on subjects that society has deemed offensive or subjects that make us uncomfortable or even subjects that we just don’t agree with, how can we know they are offensive or that we disagree if we never have the chance to hear the argument in the first place?  

This is just a small piece of Montag’s story, the real bread and so the butter too of his story is actually about time.  “The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burned things with the firemen and the sun burned Time, that meant that everything burned!”  This revelation of the cycle of life, the cycle of death was an important turning point of understanding how small his part in all of it really is.

And yet his friend says, ““Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”  So even though we all have such small parts in the world, they are all important in some way and I think this is what pushes us all forward, giving us hope that we are and can make a difference.  

His friend also said, ““Grandfather’s been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you’d find the big ridges of his thumbprint. He touched me. As I said, earlier, he was a sculptor. ‘I hate a Roman named Status Quo!’ he said to me. ‘Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal…”

I can’t connect this bread and butter any further without giving the entire story away, so please “stuff your eyes with wonder” and read this book to maybe see the world in a different way.