Not With a Fizzle, But With a Bang

I love when books take you on a journey. I think the most amazing thing in the world is being taken away from your reality by a book that teaches lessons, takes breaths, has wild adventures, forbidden ideals and philosophy beyond comprehension. Fahrenheit 451, at least for me, has been a journey from the start. Although the whole of the book is utterly fascinating and could be analyzed endlessly, I would like for the moment to focus on the end of this piece of literature.

I wonder how it would feel, to be wrapped up in a drama, so plastic and unreal that an atomic blast is the only thing that would wake you up. I wonder what those people thought in their last fiery moments before the blaze obliterated their every sense of self. And for Montag to watch that paper thin society that he had known most of his life go up in such splendor and color; just enough to impress the culture underneath its heat. Montag must push through these ashes and create information, knowledge and history through the embers.

Montag and his band of brothers become the books, the soul surviving members of an unaccepting hateful society, with plans to rebuild and prosper the men head back to the city. All this for some books.

But no it's so much more than that. Its knowledge, its prevention of past mistakes and the evolution of humanity in a decent direction. Books bring so much more than a good story. They bring light to wrong doings, quiet serenity to hectic lives, information, data, material, instruction, enlightenment, propaganda, numbers, letters, change. Through flowery language and harsh words books have altered the world. And that is something worth fighting for.

"There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we're doing the same thing, over and over, but we've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation." (163)

Twiggy