The populace is deceived into thinking that Montag is dead because their wall televisions depict the murder of the suspect Montag. Note that the population has never seen the real Montag. While the chase continues elsewhere, Montag floats in the river toward the far shore and safety.
In just a few short days, Montag has become a rebel and an outlaw. As if seeing the world and nature for the first time, Montag continues his journey on land.
Half an hour later, he sees a fire in the black distance where he stumbles upon a group of outcasts. The leader of these outcasts is Granger, a former author and intellectual. Curiously, Granger seems to have expected Montag and reveals his good will by offering him a vial filled with something that alters Montag's perspiration; after Montag drinks the fluid, the Mechanical Hound can no longer track him.
Granger explains to Montag the nature of the commune and how each member chooses a book and memorizes it. After the entire book has been memorized, he burns it to prevent the individual from being arrested by the authorities. From that time on, the story is transmitted verbally from one generation to another. Montag confesses to Granger that he once memorized some of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Granger tells him that a man named Harris knows the verses from memory, but if anything ever happens to Harris, Montag will become the book.
When Montag admits the grand failure of his plan to plant books in firemen's houses, Granger replies that the plan may have worked had it been carried out on a national scale. Granger feels, however, that the commune's way of giving life to books through their embodiment in people is the best way to combat the censorship of the government. Because of war that could begin at any minute , the commune is forced to move south, farther down the river, away from the city that is a sure target of attack.
Jets shriek overhead continually, heading for battle. Although Montag thinks briefly of Millie and of his former life, he is forced back to reality when, in an abrupt finale, the city is destroyed.
Shaken by the destruction of the city, Granger, Montag, and the rest of the commune are compelled to return to the city and lend what help they can. The ironies in this book continue to multiply as Montag discovers that Millie was the one who turned in the fire alarm. In fact, it's interesting to note that as Millie makes her abrupt departure, her worries and concern focus only on her television family and not her husband Montag. Although Beatty feels some remorse over what will happen to Montag, he continues to ridicule him: "Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why.
Didn't I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place? He does not particularly want to arrest Montag for breaking the law and his metaphorical concept of Montag as Icarus further reveals his active imagination and knowledge of illegal books. Yet through sheer maliciousness, Beatty demands that Montag burn his own home. However, note that Montag does not burn the television with remorse — in fact, he takes great pleasure in burning it: "And then he came to the parlor where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their white thoughts and their snowy dreams.
And he shot a bolt at each of the three blank walls and the vacuum hissed out at him. The entire episode has, for Montag, a phantasmagorical quality. He perceives his arrival and the preparations for the burning as a "carnival" being set up.
Later, after the destruction of his house and after the spectators disappear, Montag remarks that the incident was as if "the great tents of the circus had slumped into charcoal and rubble and the show was well over. With Faber screaming in his ear to escape, Montag experiences a moment of doubt when Beatty reduces Montag's book knowledge to pretentiousness: "Why don't you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob?
Go ahead now, you secondhand literateur, pull the trigger. The meaning of Montag's utterance is open to speculation. At first glance, this statement is about passion: If the firemen have to burn books, they should know the subjects of the books and what information they contain. Or possibly, burning shouldn't be done simply as a mindless job that one does out of habit, but should be done out of political and ideological convictions.
Given the context, however, Montag says his line with the implication that Beatty was wrong to encourage burning when he, Beatty, knew the value of books. As he turns the flamethrower on Beatty, who collapses to the pavement like a "charred wax doll," you can note the superb poetic justice in this action.
Beatty always preached to Montag that fire was the solution to everyone's problems "Don't face a problem, burn it," Beatty told him and Beatty, himself, is burned as a solution to Montag's problem. Note once again, that in describing Beatty's death, Bradbury uses the image of a wax doll. The imagery of the wax doll is thus used in Fahrenheit to describe both Beatty and Millie. By using this comparison, Bradbury shows that Beatty and Millie do not appear to be living things; they fit the mold made by a dystopian society.
As a result, Beatty is charred and destroyed by the fire that gave purpose and direction to his own life. Although Montag, who is now a fugitive, feels justified in his actions, he curses himself for taking these violent actions to such an extreme.
His discontent shows that he is not a vicious killer, but a man with a conscience. While Montag stumbles down the alley, a sudden and awesome recognition stops him cold in his tracks: "In the middle of the crying Montag knew it for the truth.
Beatty had wanted to die. He had just stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there, joking, needling, thought Montag, and the thought was enough to stifle his sobbing and let him pause for air.
Montag suddenly sees that, although he always assumed that all firemen were happy, he has no right to make this assumption any longer. Although Beatty seemed the most severe critic of books, he, in fact, thought that outlawing individual thinking and putting a premium on conformity stifled a society.
Beatty was a man who understood his own compromised morality and who privately admired the conviction of people like Montag. In a strange way, Beatty wanted to commit suicide but was evidently too cowardly to carry it out. Bradbury illustrates the general unhappiness and despondency of certain members of society three times before Beatty's incident: Millie's near-suicide with the overdose of sleeping pills; the oblique reference to the fireman in Seattle, who "purposely set a Mechanical Hound to his own chemical complex and let it loose"; and the unidentified woman who chose immolation along with her books.
People in Montag's society are simply not happy. Their desire for death reflects a social malaise of meaningless and purposelessness. When war is finally declared, the hint of doom, which has been looming on the horizon during the entire novel, now reaches a climax.
This new development serves as another parallel to the situation in which Montag finds himself. Montag sees his former life fall apart as the city around him faces a battle in which it will also be destroyed. As Montag runs, his wounded leg feels like a "chunk of burnt pine log" that he is forced to carry "as a penance for some obscure sin. The penance Montag must pay is the result of all his years of destruction as a fireman.
Even though the pain in his leg is excruciating, he must overcome even more daunting obstacles before he achieves redemption. Unexpectedly, the seemingly simple task of crossing the boulevard proves to be his next obstacle. The "beetles" travel at such high speeds that they are likened to bullets fired from invisible rifles. Bradbury enlists fire imagery to describe these beetles: Their headlights seem to burn Montag's cheeks, and as one of their lights bears down on him, it seems like "a torch hurtling upon him.
After Montag and Faber make their plans for escape, the reader witnesses Faber's devotion to the plans that he and Montag have made. In choosing to flee to St. Louis to find an old printer friend, Faber also places his life in jeopardy to ensure the immortality of books. Montag imagines his manhunt as a "game," then as a "circus" that "must go on," and finally as a "one-man carnival. When Montag escapes to the river, the imagery of water, a traditional symbol of regeneration and renewal and, for Carl Jung, transformation , coupled with Montag's dressing in Faber's clothes, suggests that Montag's tale of transformation is complete.
He has shed his past life and is now a new person with a new meaning in life. Granger goes on to introduces Montag to all of the other men, all of whom are intellectuals or professors of some kind. Granger reveals to Montag that they have a method of memorizing literature, word for word. Each of them as a different classic work stored in their memory.
Granger tells Montag that he is important because he has a copy of a part of the Bible, Ecclesiastes, stored in his mind. Granger tells Montag that they will hold onto these books until, one day, humanity needs them again. Suddenly, they see several jets fly over the distant city, dropping bombs. The city is destroyed by the blasts.
Granger tries to reassure the others by saying that humankind is like a phoenix. This mythological creature was continually destroyed by fire but, each time, it rose up out of the ashes. In Granger's mind, humans have this same ability to rise up again out of destruction. He thinks humans have it even better than the phoenix because they can learn from their mistakes.
At the very end of the novel, Granger tells Montag that, as they rebuild, humans should create a mirror factory. Here again is another symbol. Mirrors often represent the ability to see oneself clearly. So, in this case, Granger seems to believe that humankind must develop an ability to see itself clearly, to understand its flaws and shortcomings.
With that, the men head toward the city to help any survivors. Another important aspect of this chapter is the title, "Burning Bright" which could encompass several layers of meaning. On the one hand, Montag has begun to "burn bright," in a sense, with his desire for knowledge and a better life. This could also be a reference to the destruction at the end of the novel as the city is bombed and literally burns bright in the wake of its destruction.
Both of these things relate to the idea of fire, and the idea of rising again from the ashes, as the phoenix did. The fact that the men can recover every word of books they have read makes them living conduits to the dead. They playfully identify themselves to Montag by the names of long-dead authors. The traces of the past contained in books offer these men multiple lives, identities, and opportunities for rebirth.
In this new life, Montag has the three things that Faber told him were required for a full life: exposure to nature and the world of books, leisure to think, and freedom to act. When Montag sees the enemy bombers, his thoughts turn to the people he has lost: Clarisse , Faber, and Mildred. When the bombs obliterate the city, he suddenly remembers that he met Mildred in Chicago, suggesting that he has somehow managed to feel the connection that was missing when she was alive.
From the beginning of the novel he has been growing increasingly dissatisfied with a life based on empty pleasures and devoid of real connections to other people. Montag looks back at the city and realizes that he gave it only ashes. Granger compares mankind to the phoenix, a mythological creature that is consumed by fire only to rise from its own ashes in a cycle that it repeats eternally. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the task that Granger and his group have set for themselves.
At the end of the novel, Granger remarks that they should build a mirror factory so mankind can look at itself. They can also multiply and propagate images, as reading and memorizing books multiplies the identities and lives of Granger and the others. As they walk upriver to find survivors, Montag knows they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember passages from the Bible appropriate to the occasion.
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