Mollie Gordon
Literature 12/18/14
Fahrenheit 451
Exploratory Draft
My proposal is that I am interested in writing about the
true intentions of the firemen because I want to understand why they do certain
things like burn books, yet use the phoenix as their symbol, which doesn’t add
up. One way to consider this is that the firemen destroy books, all the while knowing that the ideas in books cannot be destroyed. They give the people the show
of them burning books without letting them know that the ideas in the books
will always arise from the flames.
Granger
discusses the phoenix near the end of the book. He says the bird “Built a pure
and burnt himself up… but every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the
ashes, he got himself born all over again” (Bradbury 163). This idea of dying
but not really dying directly ties into books. Everyone is told that books are
being destroyed, but isn’t there a part of them that isn’t? Something in them
that can and always will remain?
I’m not sure if the firemen are aware of this, but the
use of the phoenix as their logo could either be pure stupidity or a hidden
message. A message that no one would get because no one reads books.
Well, no one is
a strong term.
Maybe the firemen are
aware that they are secretly helpless against the undefeatable enemy of not
books, but thinking. So they use the
books as a sort of scapegoat to make themselves seem in control. That’s what their whole world is based around,
right? Control? Like when they can’t find Montag when he’s run off so they kill
a random guy to never miss a beat. Could book burning be like this for them?
There’s definitely a repeated idea of book burning being
a show, a circus, really. Full of
smoke and mirrors and fire eaters and torch jugglers. All these things are not
only pure entertainment, but pure lies.
Fire eaters don’t actually eat the fire, they know a trick. Everything is just a
trick. But the way the show of book burning actually being effective is put on,
it seems like reality, just like the parlor walls.
It’s manipulative, it’s a power play, and no one knows
enough to know better.
Why does it work so well? Because like Beatty says,
people love fire. The fact that they always wait to burn books till night
because it “looks prettier” has no sense of urgency. If books were really a
threat, they’d be far more urgent. But it’s the spectacle that counts not the
content.
Everything is about entertainment, but everything is also
about community. Maybe the reason why the firemen leave the Book People alone
is because they know they’re not likely to do any damage – no one would take
them seriously. If it’s really just about maintaining the community, they are
quite successful. There are few odd ducks like Clarisse who question things,
and when they rise up they usually fall just as fast.
Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. People don’t seem to
visit. Probably because exterior influence would be a threat. That’s why they
work so hard to keep people uneducated – because they’d look for more. They’d look past the façade.
But where do you look? This is something Faber brings up
when he says “No, no, it’s not books at all you’re looking for! Take it where
you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old
friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself” (Bradbury 82).
Interestingly out of the whole list the only resource that Montag actually has
access to is the final one: himself. So is that the only way to keep these
things going: meditation, self-reflection? But in this community it takes
someone else to catalyst such a thing.
So it has to come from somewhere else. For Clarisse it
came from nature, as Montag guesses when he reaches the land where the Book
People roam.
Montag didn’t have to look far to find a deep-seated
curiosity to learn, to know, because ultimately it’s in every one of us. So do
book burnings take this away or only prolong it? It’s definitely easier to look
for something when you know it exists somewhere.
Also – if the firemen are the actors in the show, wouldn’t
they know that they are acting? Are they conscious that they are leading people
astray? Or is it so deep-rooted in them that it’s unconscious? Beatty seems
conscious of it. His death and all indicate he knows more than he’s saying. And
when Montag the “minstrel man” thinks of winking at himself in the mirror, this
implies that he has a secret with himself (or maybe the other part of him) that
requires the winking. Maybe all firemen have these two halves of themselves,
this division between mind-body.
And there’s such a big emphasis on the casting of the
firemen. Montag has a realization at one time that the vital qualifying quality
of a firemen is that you look the
part. How interesting. If it was really about destroying literature I don’t think appearances would be such a
focus.
Watching a book burning doesn’t require thought. That’s
why it’s so effective. They don’t contemplate. They stand and watch. And it’s
so incredibly effective that all the people become sort of hypnotized by it.
Doors open all down the street when the “carnival”/the burning of Montag’s books
sets up, and people run out of houses all down the street when the book lady
burns down her house.
That’s another thing. People like the book lady are a
threat because they disrupt the show, they add in extra lines that haven’t been
rehearsed. And yet a good actor like Beatty doesn’t lose his dignity in such a
situation – he keeps it always.
When Montag has left the city, he says “He felt as if he
had a left a stage behind and many actors” (Bradbury 140). But the ironic part
is that he is one of the actors he’s left behind. All firemen are actors in the
big play of pretending book burnings can actually destroy the values in books,
the grand charade that fools the audience completely. But if acting simply isn’t
your niche (as Clarisse hints to Montag), sometimes all you need is someone
else to make you realize this.
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