Sunday, August 22, 2010

Fahrenheit 451: Summary - Burning Bright

Okay, first of all. I know I ended the last entry with Montag's house burning down. This is so not true, but it would have been so much more epic if it had been true. That would be a suiting end to the book; just kind of and "in your face!" to Montag. "Burning Bright" is the title given to the third and final section of Fahrenheit 451. It is so called because of the numerous instances of fire in the section. It starts with Guy Montag on the way to his home on an alarm call. When he arrives at home, he sees Mildred heading out of the house with all her things packed up in suticases, and Guy is led to assume that she was the one who alerted the firemen about the books. Beatty leads Montag into the house and gives him a flamethrower, which he uses, not for the intended purpose, but to scorch his long time friend and mentor, Captain Beatty. Montag had two options: option one was to destroy everything he had worked for in his home; option two was to destroy everything he had worked for from inside him. He chose to destroy everything inside himself by killing Beatty. After murdering his boss, Guy runs out into his backyard and digs up the four books he had also been hiding in the ground. The firehound races up onto Montag and injects his leg with something to make it go completely numb. But, just like he did with his last problem, Montag turns the flamethrower on it and gets it off his leg. He runs from his house as news helicopters and another mechanical dog track him. he ends up going to a co-worker's home to hide the books in his house and calls an alert to the house to draw some attention away from himself and onto this poor, unknowing, innocent man. Then, he runs to Faber's house, where Faber tells him to follow the railroad tracks, and he should meet a group of people. Guy runs down to a river and jumps in, hoping it will mask his scent trail from the dogs that could still be chasing him. Montag floats downstream for a while until he floats ashore. He meets the group of homeless men, and their leader introduces himself to Montag as Granger. he tells Montag that the group is memorizing books so they will be able to rebuild society when the world ends. Shortly thereafter, bombs are dropped all over the city, and the city is no more. The group then walks up the river to renew life and hopefully be reborn like the phoenix is said to do.

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