Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradburry

The most powerful motivation is greed and it only can be stopped with proper mediators but they must not become too excited and act foolish or their cause will become too big to consume. Great ideas for good causes take time, and warnings must be kept in mind, no matter how much the plan is needed to happen. Even though the world of a dystopian society is absolutely horrible, no government is ever overthrown easily. The exempt people of such societies, who call themselves leaders, lead lives of too much decadence as they can as they choose the lives of others. In “Burning Bright,” part three of Fahrenheit 451, Beatty says, “Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why.” This allusion demonstrates that Guy Montag and Kurt Vonnegut’s title character “Harrison Bergeron” both suffered like Icarus because they failed to heed warnings.

Throughout Fahreinheit 415, Montag was warned to stay away from books and the thought of expression as he was surveyed by the mechanical hound. The hound was a sniffer of books and controlled by the firehouse to keep the streets safe from anyone reading literature. Meaning, the hound definitely did not like a character like Montag and this hate made Montag a suspect in its green-blue neon flickering eye bulbs. Montag got a whiff of the watchful dog when “The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him… It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle…” (23). Montag, interested in the hound, touched its muzzle and was given and aggravated response. Startled at the hound’s reaction Montag said, “’No, no, boy,’ [with] his heart pounding. He saw the silver needle extend upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growl simmere...

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...hut up, shut up!’ It was a plea, a cry so terrible… from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist” (75). Montag and Bergeron lost care for the shackles that both societies put on them, their motivation became too much to bottle. The chance to let go of all the handicaps was so seceptible that waiting one more second seemed impossible to do. However, their major flaw was when they were stubborn and did not listen to the warnings that Beatty gave to Montag or Diana Moon Glampers gave to Bergeron. So as they took flight their intentions were good but when they flew too high they lost all support.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013. Print.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., “Harrison Bergeron,” Welcome to the Monkey House (New York: Dell Publishing, 1968)