He has shed his past life and is now a new person with a new meaning in life. His time spent in the water, accompanied by the escape from the city, serves as an epiphany for Montag's spirit: "For the first time in a dozen years [that is, since he became a fireman] the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire.
He thinks about his dual roles as man and fireman. While floating in the river, Montag suddenly realizes the change that has taken place: "He felt as if he had left a stage behind him and many actors.
He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new. The stage imagery implies that Montag actually realized that he was merely acting for a long period of his life, and that he is now entering into an entirely new stage of life.
Montag emerges from the river transformed. Now in the country, his first tangible sensation — "the dry smell of hay blowing from some distant field" — stirs strong melancholic emotions.
Though Montag may be a man who has trouble articulating his feelings, one learns that he is a man of deep emotions. The entire episode of him leaving the river and entering the countryside is evocative of a spiritual transformation. He has sad thoughts of Millie, who is somewhere back in the city, and has a sensuous fantasy of Clarisse; both of which are now associated with the city and a life that he no longer lives, to which he can never return.
Whereas the city was metaphorically associated with a stifling and oppressive technology, the countryside is a place of unbounded possibility, which at first terrifies Montag: "He was crushed by darkness and the look of the country and the million odors on a wind that iced the body. The forest into which he stumbles is rampant with life; he imagines "a billion leaves on the land" and is overcome by the natural odors that confront him. To underscore the strangeness of this new environment, Bradbury makes Montag stumble across a railroad track that had, for Montag, "a familiarity.
Because he is most familiar and comfortable with something associated with urban life the railroad tracks , Montag remembers that Faber told him to follow them — "the single familiar thing, the magic charm he might need a little while, to touch, to feel beneath his feet" — as he moves on. When he sees the fire in the distance, the reader sees the profound change that Montag has undergone. Montag sees the fire as "strange," because "It was burning, it was warming.
Curiously, Granger was expecting Montag, and when he offers him "a small bottle of colorless fluid," Montag takes his final step toward transformation. Not only is Montag garbed in clothes that are not his, but the chemical that Granger offers him changes his perspiration. Literally, Montag becomes a different man. When Montag expresses his prior knowledge of the Book of Ecclesiastes, Granger is happy to tell Montag of his new purpose in life: Montag will become that book.
Not only does Montag learn the value of a book, but he also learns that he can "become the book. Talking with Granger and the others around the fire, Montag gains a sense of warmth and personal well-being and recovers a sense of faith in the future. He begins gaining an understanding of the fire of spirit, life, and immortality, as well as forgetting the fire that destroys.
Notice that when the campfire is no longer necessary, every man lends a hand to help put it out. This action is further proof of the things that Granger has been telling Montag: Group effort is necessary if a positive goal is ever to be reached. When the commune moves south due to the war threat , Montag associates Millie with the city, but he admits to Granger that, strangely, he doesn't "feel much of anything" for her.
That part of his life, as well as everything relating to the city, seems distant and unreal. He feels sorry for her because he intuitively knows that she will probably be killed in the war. He is also ashamed, because in all their years together, he was able to offer her nothing. As the city is destroyed "as quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished" , Montag's thoughts return to Millie. He imagines how the last moments of her life must have been.
He pictures her looking at her wall television set. Suddenly, the television screen goes blank, and Millie is left seeing only a mirror image of herself. Montag imagines that just before her death, Millie finally sees and knows for herself how superficial and empty her life has been. And, in that instant, Montag recalls when he met her: "A long time ago" in Chicago. His former life seems like only a dream. A new day begins, and a fire providing the commune warmth and heat for cooking is made.
Granger looks into the fire and realizes its life-giving quality as he utters the word "phoenix. The mythology of fire surrounding this ancient bird is strategic to the lessons of Fahrenheit Bradbury alludes to the phoenix repeatedly in the novel. The firemen wear an emblem of the phoenix on their chests; Beatty wears the sign of the phoenix on his hat and drives a phoenix car. When Beatty is burned to death, his death by fire prepares for a rebirth that the phoenix sign traditionally symbolizes.
Montag's destruction of Beatty ultimately results in his escape from the city and his meeting with Granger. All of these actions lead to a rebirth of a new and vital life. Montag's new life is filled with hope and the promise of a new era of humanism, depicted in the words that Montag recalls from the Bible: "To everything there is a season. A time to break down, a time to build up.
With Granger leading the way, the commune heads toward the city to help those who may need them. It is a curious moment, but characteristic of Bradbury. In his novel The Martian Chronicles , for example, people flee the Earth and head for Mars because they are sure that Earth is going to be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.
However, when the transplanted Earth people hear that the holocaust has occurred, they return to Earth immediately because they know that it no longer exists as they remember it. This movement is repeated at the conclusion of Fahrenheit Montag flees the city only to return after its destruction. Although altruistically compelled to lend aid to the survivors of which there were very few , Montag and the others seems to have some ritualistic need to return to the city from which they escaped.
Even though they escaped the city for political reasons, its familiarity nonetheless remains psychologically comforting. The implication is that, in the death of someone or something that you fiercely hate, you also loose an essential part of your identity. Fahrenheit is explicit in its warnings and moral lessons aimed at the present.
Bradbury believes that human social organization can easily become oppressive and regimented unless it changes its present course of suppression of an individual's innate rights through censorship. The degenerated future depicted in Fahrenheit represents the culmination of dangerous tendencies that are submerged in your own society. At the very least, the book asserts that the freedom of imagination is a corollary of individual freedom. The first four lines of the poem are:. Tyger, Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In Blake's poem, the tiger is often considered a symbol for a world in which evil is at work; it speaks also of the dual nature of all existence. Appropriately, Part Three's title, "Burning Bright," serves a dual function: It summarizes the situation at the conclusion of the book. Even while the city burns brightly from the war's destruction, the spirit of the commune also brightly burns, signifying a future of hope and optimism.
Icarus the son of Daedalus; escaping from Crete by flying with wings made of Daedalus, Icarus flies so high that the sun's heat melts the wax by which his wings are fastened, and he falls to his death in the sea. Beatty alludes to Icarus with the comment: "Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why.
You think you can walk on water Beatty alludes to Jesus walking on water, as recorded in Mark There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am arm'd so strong in honesty that they pass by me as an idle wind, which I respect not Beattytaunts Montag with a passage from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar , Act IV, Scene iii, Line Drifting peacefully down the river into darkness, Montag finally experiences the quiet and freedom that he needs to think.
Montag considers the moon, which in turn reminds him of the sun and then of fire. He concludes that the sun actually burns time, scorching away the years and all the people on the planet.
This is a puzzling statement, but it means simply that time, represented by the rising and setting of the sun, will inevitably destroy people and everything they have worked for. He realizes that if he continues to burn things as he has all his life, everything worthwhile will be destroyed even more quickly.
He begins to think of his life as having a different purpose, of using his life to preserve rather than destroy. Soon after he has these thoughts, he sees the flame that the hobos warm their hands over. For the first time in his life, he discovers that fire can sustain life as well as destroy it.
He realizes she would not be able to tolerate the silence and is saddened at the thought. Montag becomes a whole person for the first time. Ace your assignments with our guide to Fahrenheit ! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Why did the government ban books?
Why does Mildred overdose on sleeping pills? Why does Montag want to read books? How does Montag know about Faber? What happens to Clarisse? What happens to Montag as he leaving the hound? Why does Montag leave the fire station? Does the hound kill Montag? What page does Montag find out Clarisse died? Why does Montag think Beatty wanted to die? How does Montag feel after killing Beatty? Back To Top.
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