From after leaving Faber’s through the death of the fake
Montag
Summary
Montag is able to watch the Hound track him by
glancing through people’s house windows into their TV parlors. Literally
everybody is watching the televised chase. Montag sees the Hound
hesitate when it gets to Faber’s house, but it quickly runs on.
As Montag continues to run toward the river, he hears an announcement
on his Seashell radio telling everyone to get up and look out their
doors and windows for him on the count of ten. He reaches the river
just as the announcer counts to ten and all the doors in the neighborhood
start to open. To keep the Hound from picking up his scent, he wades
into the river and drifts away with the current. He avoids the searchlights
of the police helicopters, and then sees them turn and fly away.
He washes ashore in the countryside. Stepping out of the river,
he is overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of nature. He
finds the railroad track and follows it. As he walks, he senses
strongly that Clarisse once walked there, too.
The track leads him to a fire with five men sitting
around it. The leader of the men sees him in the shadows and invites
him to join them, introducing himself as Granger. Granger reveals
a portable TV set and tells him that they have been watching the
chase and expecting him to come. The men at the fire, though homeless,
are surprisingly neat and clean, and have considerable technology.
Granger gives Montag a bottle of colorless fluid to drink and explains
that it will change the chemical index of his perspiration so the
Hound will not be able to find him. Granger tells him the search
has continued in the opposite direction and that the police will
be looking for a scapegoat to save themselves from the humiliation
of losing their prey. The men gather around the TV to watch as the
camera zooms in on a man walking down the street, smoking a cigarette.
The announcer identifies this man as Montag. The Hound appears and
pounces on him, and the announcer declares that Montag is dead and
a crime against society has been avenged. The homeless men reflect
that the police probably chose the man to be their scapegoat because
of his habit of walking by himself—clearly a dangerous and antisocial
habit.
Analysis
The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time
. . . Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any
help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun
burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt!
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Bradbury uses several devices to heighten the tension
of the chase sequence, including the use of dramatic pauses (such
as when the Hound pauses on Faber’s lawn), the description of the
Hound’s progress from Montag’s perspective, and the countdown to
the “look-out” in which everybody is to open their doors. This latter device
effectively pits the entire city against Montag and creates a definite
time factor (as opposed to the progress of the Hound, which is an
undetermined distance away from Montag). Montag has to make an effort
to remember that he is not watching a fictional drama but his own
life unfolding on twenty million TV screens.
Montag leaves the frightening unreality of
the city, which he thinks of as a stage of actors and a séance of
ghosts, and enters the world of the countryside, which feels equally
unreal to him because of its newness. 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.
As he contemplates the silence of the countryside,
Montag’s thoughts turn to Mildred. He realizes she would not be
able to tolerate the silence and is saddened at the thought. In
contrast, Montag feels increasingly comfortable in the presence
of nature, becoming “fully aware of his entire body.” He no longer
feels that his mind, hands, and blood are separate entities, as
he did in the city. Montag becomes a whole person for the first
time.
