Fahrenheit 451 pp. 154-End (165)

Hello.

I had a wonderful post that was beautifully written and well thought out, when I did something stupid and accidentally deleted an hour’s worth of work and a page an a half-long post. As a result, I will have to be briefer in this new version. I apologize for that.

The first thing that I have to say about the ending of Fahrenheit 451 is wow. I sit here at my computer, utterly pissed off at the vile thing, and can’t come up with anything witty or clever to say. All I can say is wow.

I had this idea in my head that there was no way that Bradbury could tie up the ending happily. Montag and his rag-tag group of men were going to spend the rest of their lives living on the train tracks, never having the opportunity to recite what they had so long stored away in their heads. Meanwhile, the civilization would kill each other and deaden their minds with “parlor games”. That leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

True, the city was bombed and, true, that’s sad, but is not nearly so sad as if Montag and the other men had never helped society had had spent their whole lives on the tracks.

It was a marvelous ending.

Montag and the other old men get a chance to recite what they had stored to someone who might, just might, listen, now that the country is at war.

I think this is part of what Montag was saying when he said that if anyone asked them what they were doing, he could say that they were remembering. They were remembering the books; they were remembering the way things used to be. But perhaps most important of all, they were remembering what happened to their civilization. They remembered so that one day, man wouldn’t have to be a phoenix, they wouldn’t have to burn and be reborn from the ashes. They wouldn’t have to burn at all.

I think that the phoenix analogy is truly great for two reasons. The first is that is perfectly illustrates the way Montag’s society operates. It burns, it’s reborn from the ashes, yes, but if people just remembered their mistakes, perhaps they wouldn’t have a catalyst as dramatic as complete destruction for any change to happen. The second reason that I think it is so powerful is because if follows the trend of burning that exists throughout the book. I think that it really connects to my last post in which I quoted the line about the sun and time burning.

I am sorry that this is not nearly as good as the original, but I do have a lot of homework and not the time to recreate with the beautiful language.

Goodbye.