Fire, Light
Author's Comments - I made a sincere effort to simplify, simplify (ironic considering my subject). I dislike the shallowness of this essay, and the very crude "he mentions" or "he says" or "he remarks," but that's the consequence of writing in class.
In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the death of Captain Beatty, brought about by his own desire to end his world-weary existence, frees Montag to find his place and meaning in life.
First, because of his superior mind, Beatty cannot be a part of the society whose ignorance he protects, and finds mediocre equality only in death. Beatty demonstrates his scholarly sense by recognizing the history and significance of, “We shall this day light such a candle…” that the old woman utters in her distress as the firemen prepare to burn her books. This sort of learning is privileged information and “only fire chiefs remember it now”; Deathly tired of the blank “soap-faced men,” tired of knowing so much when others know so little, Beatty spurs himself on a course of self-destruction like “a wax doll melting in its own heat.” The Captain mentions to Montag that a “fireman … purposely set a Mechanical Hound in his own chemical complex and let it loose,” professing not to understand the desperation that would ignite such a suicide. But having been John before turning Judas Iscariot, Beatty knows, better than anyone, the futility of the existence he maintains. Though Beatty is in league with those who spin the earth like a top, faster and faster to nowhere, his very knowledge and position set him apart from the ignominious masses. At the last, the Captain baits Montag to “pull the trigger,” using Montag’s beloved books to crystallize the fireman’s confused hatred and direct it at him. Beatty brags that “life has become one big pratfall” through efforts of men like him, and he finds he cannot live in the world he so effectively helps to preserve.
Second, Beatty’s suicide forces Montag to fully accept his role as a rebel against the system. Beatty acts as the devil quoting scripture, confounding Montag with hails of disjointed quotations, of illogical sense as he “parried every thrust.” Montag can never achieve his or society’s freedom so long as Beatty lives, for the Captain will set out to foil him at every point. Though he calls a book “a loaded gun,” Beatty stirs Montag’s thoughts with this double-edged sword, “muddying the waters” until they “whirl sickeningly” and Montag cannot think further. The roar of Beatty’s words “bombard him at immense volumes,” deafening Faber’s quiet humming and the thundering of Montag’s own feelings. Faced with the ruin of his life, Montag turns on Beatty, transforming the Captain into “a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering manikin.” The nonsense of his quotations and his fascination with the “beauty” and “mystery” of fire culminates in his disintegrating into a burning testament of his ashen truths and fiery lies. Now a man hunted for the murder, Montag flees from the city to search for safety and acceptance in a group of men who share his dreams. Through his killing of his worst enemy, Captain Beatty, Montag realizes the true weapons of his war against society and the government—he has learned to fight fire with fire.
Those “who are a little wise, the best fools be,” Beatty warns as Montag hesitates at this stage of curiosity and longing, at which threshold Beatty surely lingered once. Beatty, despising his former “weakness,” succumbs to a life of “automatic reflex” rather than feeling “bestial and lonely” because he tries to think beyond. Twisted envy and hate smolder in him as he recognizes the signs of his own past delinquency in the recalcitrant fireman, sees the bloom of promise he has forsworn. The protégé Montag uses the master’s teaching against the Captain as he obediently “destroys responsibility and consequences.” Beatty would have stifled Montag’s inflating hopes and ambitions had his death wish not destroyed him first, leaving Montag a savior without an antichrist.
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