Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Contributed by Ariane Heyne
Section 8
Summary

From the opening through the second visit with Faber

Montag looks at Clarisse’s empty house. Beatty believes that he is under her influence, and he berates him. Mildred quickly comes out of Montag’s house holding a suitcase. She is taken away by a taxi. Montag realizes that she must have been the one to raise the alarm. Beatty gives Montag the order to burn his house himself using the flamethrower. He warns him that the Hound is watching for him if he attempts to escape. Montag follows orders and burns his home. When he is done, Beatty arrests him.

Beatty realizes that Montag is listening to something and he hits his head. The radio falls from Montag’s ear. Beatty retrieves it, and says that he will trace it to find out who the person is on the other end. Beatty uses more literary quotations to antagonize him, and finishes with a quote from Julius Caesar. Montag attacks Beatty with his flamethrower, burning him severely. The other firemen present don’t mind, and Montag knocks them out. The Mechanical Hound makes an appearance, and it injects anesthetic into Montag’s leg before he is able to use this flamethrower to destroy it. His leg is numb, and he stumbles way. He makes his way to the place where he concealed the books in his backyard, and he discovers four that Mildred failed to find. There is the sound of sirens, and Montag tries to continue making his way down the alley. He falls down and starts to cry. He then forces himself to get up and runs until the numbness goes away. After that, he puts a regular Seashell radio in his ear and consequently hears a police alert. It is warning people that they need to be on the lookout for him. It says that he is on foot and alone.

He reaches a gas station. While there, he removes the soot from his face so that he won’t appear as suspicious. He hears news on the radio: war has been declared. He begins to cross over an expansive street and is almost hit by a speeding car. Montag initially thinks that this is the police coming to find him, but he comes to realize that the car’s passengers are children who would have ended his life for no reason. He feels angry and ponders whether they were the motorists who caused Clarisse’s death. He sneaks into a house of one of his coworkers and hides the books there, and then he goes to a phone booth to sound an alarm. He ventures to Faber’s house, informs him of what has happened, and gives some money to the professor. Faber tells him he should follow the line of the old railroad tracks out of town, so that he can look out for camps of homeless intellectuals. He instructs Montag to meet with  him in St. Louis at some point in the future. He is going there to meet a retired printer. Faber puts on the TV news, and they learn that there is a new Mechanical Hound that is being followed by a camera crew. It has been set to go after Montag. Montag packs a suitcase of Faber’s old clothes, instructs the professor as to how to get rid of his scent in the house so the Hound will not look there, and flees. Faber’s plan is to travel out of the city by bus to see his printer friend as soon as he can.

Analysis

It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did . . . It’s a mystery. . . . Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences . . . clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.

Montag’s betrayal by his wife, Mildred, is complete. He recognizes that she will quickly forget him as she leaves. She listens to her Seashell radio for consolation. Montag doesn’t feel a great deal of anger towards her. He only really feels regret and pity.  

In this part of the novel, Montag’s final confrontation with Beatty is highly significant. The ironic self-awareness we see in Beatty, as well as his comprehension of the fact that the choices he’s made have not given him true happiness, seems to become more and more prominent throughout the novel, and it emerges to the surface in this scene. His behavior appears to be deliberately calibrated to lead to his own death.

In this section, Montag is still emotionally detached. He enjoys the burning of his own house as fully as he did that of others, and he starts to believe Beatty’s assertion that fire is eliminating his problems. He thinks about Mildred and the entirety of his earlier life in the ashes, and he feels that he is actually far away and that his body is, in fact, dead. Additionally, he asserts that it is not exactly he who murders Beatty—he is unable to discern if it is his own hands or the way Beatty reacts to them that causes him to act in that way. Beatty is portrayed as no longer being human and no longer being known as a person by Montag when he is set on fire. In a way similar to a great deal in the novel, fire has contradictory meanings. It is representative of both the subjugation and liberation of Montag, and he is able to reach his freedom by abusing the power of fire. After all, murder is a far more serious crime than burning books. It is only later that Montag comes to an understanding of what he has done and he feels remorseful about his actions.

The difference between Montag and people such as Mildred and Beatty is not as great as he imagines. Montag tells Faber that he has spent his whole life always doing one thing and feeling something different. This is an unconscious dualism that has a resemblance to the conflicts in Mildred and Beatty’s psyches. Additionally, when he and Faber see sensationalist news coverage on TV of his escape and chase, Montag is fascinated by the chance of seeing the drama unfold on TV. He is even a bit flattered by all the glitz and sort of glamour that he seems to have created. He ponders whether, if he is killed on TV, he will be able to summarize his entire life in a few words. These words would be intended to greatly impact the audience. Montag revolts against his culture, but he hasn’t yet escaped it. This is the case even in his moment of greatest danger, when he is taken in by sensationalism and fame. However, the final image at Faber’s house implies that there is an ending of hope for Montag and the world he lives in. This image involves rain (coming from the sprinklers) fighting images of fire that are linked to the men chasing Montag.

The style of writing in this section of the novel is strikingly poetic. The author makes extensive use of figurative language (we see this especially in metaphors involving the stage and circus) and frequently bends grammar rules. He utilizes sentence fragments as transitional devices, as well as one long sentence to help communicate Montag’s breathlessness during his flight.

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