A woman overdoses on medication, much to the dismay of her husband; a woman watches as the room she is in is doused with kerosene before taking it upon herself to light the first match; a fire captain hands a flamethrower to one of his subordinates and orders him to point it at him – the captain himself – and pull the trigger. These three suicide attempts – one successful, one unsuccessful, and one interpreted as murder – embody the theme of self-destruction that runs through Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451,” and each of them represents a different facet of this theme: involuntary self-destruction, voluntary self-destruction and voluntary self-destruction in order to anticipate involuntary self-destruction. Mildred Montag's overdose involves a dissatisfaction with the world as it is and a desire to escape into something less real, more passive, a kind of indirect and involuntary self-destruction. The old woman's voluntary death results in immense satisfaction with the world taken from her, and no desire to live a life without any elements of that world. And Captain Beatty's death at the hands of Guy Montag represents a combination of both: a man torn between affection and duty, between affection for what he destroys and for the process of destruction itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Mildred's self-destruction is a trait common to the majority of citizens of the society described in the novel, and her path is one that Montag risks ensuing – at least until the moment her curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the covers of a book. “I am a cowardly old fool,” says English Professor Faber, the kind of placid man Montag will become if he does not immediately rebel against the system that oppresses him. “Proof of my terrible cowardice: I lived alone for so many years, throwing images on the walls with my imagination. » Faber is what Montag will become if he allows Mildred to desensitize him. “She was starting to scream now,” we are told of Mildred when Montag looks at his wife with new eyes after their argument, “sitting there like a wax doll melting in her own heat.” Mildred's self-destruction is of the involuntary and passive type, she does not so much destroy herself as allow herself to slowly rot. Her world is a dream world for which she abandons reality: she is unconscious when we meet her, having taken an overdose of pills intended to put her to sleep and send her into dreams. When she comes to, she is full of denial and claims that she would never have done such a thing. Later, her own name is inserted into a television show and thus she is literally absorbed into a fictional world. And finally, she replaces her husband with the cartoon The White Clowns to the point that Montag asks her: “Does the White Clown love you?” …Does your “family” love you, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie? The answer, of course, is no, but as is often the case between Montag and Mildred, it remains unspoken. Indeed, speaking out loud is the means by which Montag almost engages in his own self-destruction: he recites a poem to Mildred and her friends, and reduces one of them to tears, causing the others to turn against him. The anger he provokes leads to his downfall. But this can hardly surprise him, and even less so Faber, who listens to the poetry recital through Montag's earpiece: "You're going to ruin everything," he insists, "Shut up, you idiot! – but Montag persists, the poetry is read aloud, andlater, after the women leave his house, they turn to the authorities and point the finger at him. “It was pretty silly to quote poetry around freedom and ease like that,” Beatty warns Montag during their final confrontation. “It was the act of a damn stupid snob.” Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he is Lord of all creation. Ironic, given that moments later, as Montag has a flamethrower pointed at him, it's Beatty who quotes poetry: "Why don't you throw Shakespeare at me, you bumbling snob?" “There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am so strong in honesty that they seem to me to be useless wind, which I do not respect! » » This is not the first demonstration of Beatty's literary knowledge. Earlier, he references the myth of Icarus and Daedalus, quotes Jonathan Swift and alludes to biblical passages. It also includes a reference to the religious persecution made by said old woman before she set herself on fire. How is it that a man who investigates houses to burn the illegal and forbidden books they possess knows so much about literature himself? Furthermore, how is he still able to display some level of visible affection for literature – an affection that Montag shares, but which, unlike Beatty, he is not allowed to show to the outside world? With his knowledge of and resentment of literature, Beatty embodies the conflict between the destruction of literature and its appreciation – and thus his actions and speeches indirectly express the reasons why the burning of literature is self-destructive, even as his words dictate why it is a positive thing. "Not everyone is born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone [is] made equal," Beatty tells Montag in one of many examples of revisionist history accepted by society in this era. world. “Each man is the image of the other, so all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them tremble, against which to judge themselves.” Herein lies the essence of the evolution of book burning, as well as the essence of its self-destructive nature. Like Mildred's involuntary self-destruction, the book burning arose not from active opposition to literature, but from a passive attraction to other materials. “The world was filled with eyes and elbows and mouths,” Beatty tells Montag. “Films, radios, magazines, books [have been] reduced to a kind of plasticine standard. …Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows. …School [was] shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages ​​abandoned, English and spelling gradually neglected, and finally almost completely ignored. In essence, Beatty details the devolution of literature – indeed, of “thought” itself and its replacement by graphic inputs, films, drawings and photographs. “No more cartoons in books. More photos. The mind drinks less and less. … Books, said those pesky snobbish critics, were dishwater. No wonder the books stopped selling, critics said. …And there you have it. This does not come from the government. There was no saying, no declaration, no censorship,” Beatty says of the process by which the books were banned, before adding the qualifier: “to begin with.” These three words – “to begin” – embody everything that is you. -destroyer on the book burning of the company described in the novel. This is self-defeating because, most obviously, Beatty's assertions regarding the validity ofthe burning of books does not stand up. He claims that individuals in society lost interest in literature because nothing of value was being produced – books were dishwater – but this could not imply a mass abandonment of fiction, especially when so much value has already been accumulated by society to begin with. with – just because no new books of any value are being produced, there is no reason to abandon hundreds of years of books that have some value. Most importantly, however, book burning is self-destructive because it constitutes a violation of individuality and individual rights. Beatty uses this notion to his advantage – “all men made equal” – but here he fails to add the qualifier that should appear at the end of this statement: “All men made equal, resulting in mass mediocrity , without any man being given the possibility of disrupting or overcoming this equality. In other words, book burning is self-destructive because it takes away from the individual the choice of whether or not to indulge in literature. Certainly, even if there were a world in which society lost interest in fiction and books, some individuals would still choose to pursue literature for pleasure. These individuals do exist in this world – in the form of Montag, of course, and Beatty to an extent, and especially in the form of Faber and the group of men Montag meets outside of town – but it is not just their right to read books that has been taken away from them: they have also lost their right to choose to read books. Book burning is therefore self-destructive, both on a physical and metaphysical level: it denies any indulgence towards physical literature – printed pages and words – but it also denies an individual the right to use their metaphysical free will and, in doing so , thus, we realize that it is self-destructive because it undoes what makes us truly human. However, this is not the extent of his self-destruction, it is only the most visible extent. Even worse than this destruction of literature and free will is the destruction of truth. How do we know the story Beatty tells Montag is real? In fact, we know Beatty lies repeatedly: “When it all began, ask yourself, our work, how did it begin, where, when? Well, I would say it really started around a thing called the Civil War. This is not true: firefighters, as we know, were never employed to burn books, and no such tendency occurred during the Civil War. Even Beatty disputes this claim, but with another lie: “I would say it really [started during] the Civil War. Even though our rules claim it was founded earlier. If Beatty challenges an important element of his own code of conduct, how can we be sure that everything in that code is true? Instead, we realize that with the above time frame given for the creation of the fire department, as well as other assertions such as that houses have always been fireproof, the citizens of this story are living in a world that has fallen victim to a fictional world. past, as in the aforementioned revisionist history. The history of this society has been silenced, suppressed, lost and destroyed, reconstructed and rewritten for propaganda purposes, and almost all of the actual historical truth has been lost, resulting in a world whose identity even is that of a dualistic irony: a world which flees fiction, but which is nevertheless almost entirely built on lies. Beatty even lets this inconsistency slip,perhaps unconsciously: he calls Montag a "clumsy snob" for reciting poetry, and he calls past critics "snobs" for denouncing books. Who, then, does he consider to be the real “snob”: those who love fiction, or those who ridicule it? His inconsistency believes in the truth he strives to hide: that he knows, one way or another, that the laws he defends are just a facade; that, at the very least, they could not have been based on a real story and are instead the product of fiction disguised as fact. Beatty continues to explain how book burning came to be: “You have to understand that our civilization is so vast that we cannot leave our minorities upset and agitated. …Colored people don’t like “Little Black Sambo.” Burn it. White people don't feel good in "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Burn it. ...Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things together. It was because of the sensitivity of minority groups, Beatty says, that book burning was implemented; the government did not want any disruption from these groups. This is an ironic example of a more "positive" form of self-destruction, at least from Montag and Faber's point of view: in order not to offend minority groups, the book burning decree incited the creation of a new minority group that would eventually overthrow him. And, more ironically, yet to enforce this decree, the government has employed firefighters, and yet it is one of these same firefighters who joins in a rebellion against the government and the decree it is trying to enforce. “At least once in their career, every firefighter gets an itch,” Beatty says. “What do the books say,” he asks himself. Oh, to scratch that itch, huh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I've had to read a few in my life, to know what I was talking about, and the books don't say anything! Note that Beatty didn't read books to know what they were about but to know what he was about, and the books gave him answers - they gave his life a purpose, even if he didn't realize it. not realize. “[The books don’t say] anything you can teach or believe,” he insists, but Beatty continually uses the books’ content throughout the novel to teach Montag; their relationship, until Montag rebels against Beatty, is a teacher-student relationship. Although they ultimately become opponents, Montag finds a sort of thematic counterpart in Beatty since, on a more personal and less societal level, they engage in voluntary self-destruction together in order to preempt their involuntary self-destruction. That is, they each suspect that they will follow in Mildred's footsteps, rotting in passivity, so they deliberately choose to follow in the old woman's footsteps, to defy those who demand that they not do certain things - to defy even the laws they swore to uphold – to avoid dissolving into nothingness. Like Mildred, Montag and Beatty slowly deteriorate. Montag first admits that he is unhappy: “I don’t know anything anymore,” he says. Likewise, Beatty's violent antagonism arises from the frustration he feels with his obvious and paradoxical affection for literature and his duty not only to hide this affection, but also to burn its source. Beatty, for all his long and prodigious speeches, consistently reveals more of himself through what he doesn't say rather than through the words he uses: "Who knows who the cultured man's target might be?" » he asks, without openly recognizing that he himself is a cultured man: “Me? I won't stand [an educated man] for a minute. Here it indicates.