Burning Bright

The conclusion to this novel was very surprising. I would have never guessed that it would end with Montag on the run with the other professors and a bomb being dropped on their city. I do not think that the idea of the war was presented well. All of a sudden, near the end of the novel voices in the Seashell announced war was declared. There was no real reason why said in the novel, which is strange considering how well thought out everything is in the novel. I would have liked to see some basis for the war that basically ended the novel. I thought Captain Beatty as the antagonist in the novel was perfect. He was the perfect amount of smart and crazy mixed together. I thought his death was rather fitting as well: being burnt to death by Montag. Beatty did surprise me when he made a literary reference to the Greek myth about Icarus and Daedalus. "'Well,' said Beatty, 'Now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why" (Bradbury 113). Beatty could not have known that if he had not read it somewhere.

I found several of the things that the professors on the run said very profound. "But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth doing" (Bradbury 153). This is an important quote because it shows even though these professors are vastly outnumbered in their quest to bring back the books to the world, they will not stop. Granger also has another quote, talking about what it really means to live your life. "It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away." (Bradbury 157).

 Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991. Print.