Fahrenheit 451

“Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle.”

Clarisse’s appearance intrigues Montag, for she is unlike anyone he’s met before. Fire has only negative connotations for Montag. It’s a source of destruction in his life, but within Clarisse, fire symbolizes the warmth of her personality and her love of the natural world.

“You laugh when I haven’t been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I’ve asked you.”

During Montag’s first encounter with Clarisse, she mentions she’d once heard that firemen used to put out fires, rather than start them. Montag laughs at her suggestion, and Clarisse chastises him with the above comment. Clarisse questions everything, but Montag is machine-like and incapable of seeing the bigger picture. His attitude changes as his friendship with Clarisse develops.

“If only someone else’s flesh and brain and memory. If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry-cleaner’s and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and reblocked it and brought it back in the morning.”

Medical technicians have given Mildred a blood transfusion after taking an overdose. Montag looks on as she sleeps soundlessly. He realizes for the first time how empty Mildred is and how disconnected they are from each other. He imagines how different their marriage could be if the medics were able to do something about her mind as well as her body.

“‘Why is it,’ he said, one time, at the subway entrance, ‘I feel I’ve known you so many years?’

‘Because I like you,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want anything from you. And because we know each other.’”

Montag ponders this as Clarisse accompanies him to the subway station. Clarisse reveals the answer, and it’s because he can only truly relax when he’s around her. She doesn’t have an agenda, and she’s the only person in his life who doesn’t pose a threat to him on some level.

“‘Don’t get excited, I’m trying to think.’ She laughed an odd little laugh that went up and up. ‘Funny, how funny, not to remember where or when you met your husband or wife.’”

Unable to sleep, Montag asks Mildred if she can recall when they first met. Montag gets increasingly agitated as it dawns on him that it’s a question neither of them can answer. Mildred is uncomfortable with this knowledge and tries to trivialize Montag’s observations on their marriage, revealing how little she knows about their relationship.

“There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

Montag ponders this while reflecting on the death of the elderly woman. He realizes that books must be extremely valuable if someone would choose to sacrifice themselves for them. This encounter and his friendship with Clarisse are both pivotal moments in the novel. They’re critical to his transformation from book-burner to revolutionary.

“There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!”

Beatty visits Montag at home after learning about his colleague’s strange behavior in the firehouse. The impassioned speech he delivers here is partly a history lesson: Beatty justifies society’s shift to authoritarianism, explaining that the government did not initiate censorship; rather, it began with the people, who grew tired of books and their questioning nature. In Beatty’s eyes, it was only when the government realized it could create an equal society that banning books became part of a legal framework. Of course, this history is revisionist. As Montag later learns, books posed a threat to the government, and so the government began burning them to maintain control and keep society docile and ignorant, which reflects The Impact of Censorship on Society.

“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So a book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it.”

Beatty continues his defense of the system by pointing out that people no longer worry about seeing themselves as inferior in the eyes of others: everyone is the same. People are happy and books are as dangerous as guns. Beatty is the vehicle Bradbury uses to explain society’s reasoning: bring everyone down to the same level for the sake of equality.

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over, so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”

After revealing his stash of hidden books to Mildred, Montag comes across this quote from Scottish diarist James Boswell. The subject is friendship, and the words remind Montag of his friendship with Clarisse, the one person in his life who has shown him genuine kindness at that stage. For Boswell, true friendship is both a consistent and, at times, surprising series of acts.

“Mildred kicked at a book. ‘Books aren’t people. You read and I look around, but there isn’t anybody!’”

As Montag and Mildred continue to leaf through the books, Mildred becomes increasingly frustrated. She’s unable to think critically and sees reading as a waste of time. Montag struggles to comprehend the significance of books too, but he has enough self-awareness to realize there is something here worth exploring.

“‘I don’t talk things, sir,’ said Faber. ‘I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.’”

Montag recalls the first time he met Faber in the park. Faber said these words to Montag, and it sets him up as a very different character to Beatty and Mildred. Faber is interested in analyzing “why” things happen rather than merely “how.” This more intellectual approach puts him at odds with the world he’s living in.

“Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, ‘Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!’ And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired; the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks.”

Montag recalls this childhood memory as he struggles to memorize sections from the Bible as he journeys on the subway to Faber’s house. The story of the sieve and the sand is a metaphor for Montag’s life; he is an empty vessel struggling to internalize anything of note in a meaningless world that his cruel cousin symbolizes here.

“Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs.”

Faber compares Montag’s copy of the Bible with the depiction of religion on the parlor walls. By positioning Christ as part of the system, Faber is making a statement on how insignificant religion has become. Jesus exists to advertise products and is essentially just an actor, stripped of any cogency.

“Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.”

Montag wants to talk with someone who has something relevant to say. His frustration with technology and the way it has taken control of their lives reflects the narrative conflict between Technology and the Natural World. Montag sees Mildred as a victim of technology and desperately needs an outlet. He wants Faber to help him make sense of his existence.

“It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the ‘parlour families’ today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors but are not.”

Faber laments what society has lost—anything of substance. He tries to advise Montag and explain that Montag feels empty because his life lacks meaning. Books were once a source of knowledge that gave people a sense of direction; a radical concept for Montag, who had simply seen books as mere words on a page.

“Only the family is people.”

Montag tells Faber that this is something Mildred often says. She’s unable to form relationships that require two-way participation and is entirely reliant on the parlor walls, “her family,” for social interaction. Bradbury is setting Mildred up as a victim of society. She can’t cope with real social interactions because she has lost the skill from disuse.

“Anyway, Pete and I always said, no tears, nothing like that. It’s our third marriage each and we’re independent. Be independent, we always said. He said, if I get killed off, you just go right ahead and don’t cry, but get married again and don’t think of me.”

Montag interrogates Mildred’s friends and asks them for their thoughts on the likelihood of war. Mrs. Phelps is apathetic on the subject, and the above anecdote about coping with loss reinforces the idea that, in this society, married couples are disconnected from each other and tend to coexist rather than experience fulfilling relationships. Mrs. Phelps’s marriage to Pete mirrors Montag’s relationship with Mildred.

“Who are a little wise, the best fools be.”

Beatty uses several literary allusions to show how foolish Montag has been when he returns to the firehouse. This is the second example, and it references The Triple Fool by John Donne. Beatty is alluding to Montag’s dismissal of the firemen’s repurposed role. For Beatty, His ignorance is proof that Montag’s not as smart as he thinks he is.

“Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them.”

Beatty says this to Montag after ordering him to burn down his own home. He is using hyperbole to compare Montag with Jesus, whose walking-on-water miracle appears in the New Testament. Despite the exaggeration, In Beatty’s eyes, Montag has a superiority complex and society is better off without him and his books.

“He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great séance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new.”

Montag escapes the Mechanical Hound and finds himself drifting down the river. Here, Bradbury uses figurative language to highlight Montag’s journey into the unknown. The “many actors,” “the great séance,” and “all the murmuring ghosts” (85) refer to both the hunt and the city’s population, most of whom oppose him. Montag feels calmer now, having escaped the city and the clutches of technology.

“The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time […] Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!”

Montag lies on his back, surveying the moon and stars as he continues his journey down the river. Finally, he has the freedom to think. He contemplates the moon and how it’s lit by the sun, and connects the sun with the concept of time, as both burn and consume, albeit in different ways. In this analogy, if the sun burns time and time burns “the years and the people,” then by continuing to burn things as a fireman, he’s just a link in a chain that will see “everything burnt.”

“All we want to do is keep the knowledge we think we will need, intact and safe. We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good.”

This passage speaks to The Triumph of Knowledge Over Ignorance. Montag meets Granger and his disparate band of fellow intellectuals, and Granger explains the memorization technique that his network of outcasts has perfected; it’s essentially a form of nonviolent protest that contrasts with the more extreme plan that Montag and Faber concocted.

“We’re nothing more than dust-jackets for books, of no significance otherwise.”

For Granger, his network is simply a conduit for the books and the words they’ve consigned to memory. The men are of no real importance as they’re merely “dust jackets.” It’s the literature they are protecting with their minds that matters. Here, the men are putting literature above the importance of their own lives which directly opposes the society that Montag left behind, whose goal was to favor equality and feelings over knowledge.