Fahrenheit 451
Thursday, November 21st, 2002In Ray Bradbury’s classic novel firemen don’t put out fires–they start them in order to burn books. Good, albeit scary, stuff.
On the way downtown he was so completely alone with his terrible error that he felt the necessity for the strange warmness and goodness that came from a familiar and gentle voice speaking in the night. Already, in a few short hours, it seemed that he had known Faber a lifetime. Now he knew that he was 2 people, that he was, above all, Montag who knew nothing, who did not even know himself a fool, but only suspected it. And he knew that he was also the old man who talked to him and talked to him as the train was sucked from one end of the night city to the other on one long sickening gasp of motion. In the days to follow, and in the nights when there was no moon and in the nights when there was a very bright moon shining on the earth, the old man would go on with this talking and this talking , drop by drop, stone by stone, flake by flake. His mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag anymore, this the old man told him, assured him, promised him. He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence there would be neither fire nor water, but wine. Out of two separate opposite things, a third. And one day he would look upon the fool and know the fool. Even now he could feel the long journey, the leave-taking, the going-away from the self he had been.
What a dreadful surprise. For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is certain, that nothing will ever happen to me. Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But lets not talk about them, eh? By the time the consequences catch up with you, it’s too late, isn’t it Montag?