Fahrenheit 451

Reading the book Fahrenheit 451 really made me think about what I was reading. After all, the book is about burning books, exactly what I am reading. So I found myself paying attention to exactly what I was reading. I found the descriptions of the burning books like on the first page where it said, “With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house”. This description to me actually sounded quite exciting. As somewhat of a pyro myself, I enjoy watching things burn, and starting fires. However, actually burning books, especially for what I see as no reason, seemed wrong to me. After all, they symbolize hope and life, and destroying such a thing is plain not right. Starting a fire for warmth, or even for pure entertainment, is fine. However, when you start to destroy books that other people have taken so long to put their thoughts into words in, things don’t work. Obviously there will be a problem. You can’t just start burning works of literature and expect there not to be a problem like revolt or rebellion. In this case of Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is the one revolting. However this is only after he meets Clarisse McClellen, a girl who is “17 and crazy”. She seems very odd, very innocent, but turns out to know more than anyone else even though she doesn’t go to school. Captain Beatty describes her as a queer, someone who just gets in the way of the good in the world. Her whole family seems to be like this. Guy Montag is amused by her personality and it’s what sparks interest in him and ‘wakes him up’.
So to sum up everything I’m saying, it’s wrong to burn books, and if you do, things are going to eventually erupt. It’s shown in this novel by Guy Montag who is influence by Clarisse. Though we may see this meeting of these two characters as coincidence, in a world like this, it is inevitable. And this is the case in the other novels we have read. In “Feed” we have Violet and Titus meet up on the moon. The same story is here. Violet and her thoughts get Titus thinking about just what kind of world he is living in. However, in the end , Violet dies, just like Clarisse does in “Fahrenheit 451”. Also in “1984”, though the outcome is not the same, we once again have two characters meeting. They are Julia and Winston. Though Winston had already had ideas of revolt, Julia expands these interests. Unfortunately for them both, they are tortured and nothing comes of the revolt. But as we can see from these relations to other novels we have read, when things like human thought and will are effected, the inevitable revolt comes to life.