Author's Note: This is an essay I did for the Veterans Essay Contest. It tells a story about what I went through to realize that patriotism was more important than I knew, or anyone knows for that matter. Though it is not nearly explained accurate enough in this essay, that moment was very touching to everyone's heart.
Shaking Hands
If you look around, you can see patriotism everywhere. It's waving in front of millions of houses, parading down the street on the Fourth of July, and most importantly, it’s fighting out on the battlefield. It only seems obvious we should love our country, and the ones protecting it, because the soldiers that go out on the battlefield fight for our freedom. Patriotism is still very much alive, and this is ideal proof.
Last year, I accompanied my mom to the Memorial Day service at the V.A Cemetery, because she is the Assistant Director in the Department of Veterans Affairs regional office. She told me previously how important this was to her, and to all the people she worked with, because this was an event to which anyone could attend. The number of people that showed up was astounding, all to show how much they appreciate our country and the ones that had served it. As the ceremony began, the band started playing different anthems for each branch of the service. All the veterans in the audience stood up. I looked around, and saw men and women in uniforms, swelling with pride as they stood up in salute. The people who stood out though, were the ones who stood straight and tall, with their hands shaking as they held them in a salute. It was breathtaking and heart-wrenching at the same time. These people, so old, so many stories in their eyes, filled me with admiration, knowing that they live and breathe patriotism, and will, until their last breath.
Everywhere we look we can see people being patriotic. Whether it is something as simple as wearing red white and blue on the Fourth of July, or as big as signing up for the army, all these things mean so much to our country. Patriotism is in everyone’s hearts, and especially for those extraordinary people, it matters more than anyone in this world can express.
Lifeline
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, If you don’t succeed, try again, your pain can equal your success. All these sayings have held a powerful meaning for people all over the world for decades, encouraging them to keep going, and to stay strong. While this may be true, only the opposite can be expected in a world very different than our own, like in Fahrenheit 451. In this dystopic world, what doesn’t kill Montag makes him weaker.
At the start of this novel, Montag is a fireman who likes to burn. This is nothing irregular in this nightmare vision, and therefore Montag is normal and sane. As soon as Clarisse enters the picture, his world starts to turn upside down, as he finally starts to think, something seldom to happen. Of course, no thoughts can be kept if not written down, so as Montag starts wading the waters of literature confusion happens. The first hint that he really starts to turn insane is on the subway, when he is trying to read the Bible while Denham's Dentifrice plays over the speakers. Montag's two worlds combine; the new world of knowledge, endless possibilities, and the scary thought of power; and the world that he has known his whole life, that mindless drone state, blind to everything around him. That reaction was more than he could handle, so he started acting strange, freaking out on a level that was not ordinary, and his mind was never the same. There are examples of that through the events that follow, like when he goes to the bathroom twice in a half hour to scrub the guilt off his hands, something none of us would consider doing, but something Lady McBeth did when she wrung her hands to "get the blood off", and also because she was insane at that point.
At the most recent part of the novel, Montag's physical state is clear. He has been through thick and thin; watching an old woman die, finding out his life has been lead wrong, and the guilt of reading books when it is against his nature. Montag did not become stronger from any of those events. The scariest part of the book was when Montag murdered Beatty. One could definitely say what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger in the case of their wife leaving and their house burning down, but in this case Montag did not come out a better person, he took someone's life as the outcome. That scene painted a horrible picture in my head; Montag torturing someone until they were not recognizable as human, and then killing them is a very good example of something a deranged person would do. As Montag is running from the cops, in pain and stressed excessively, the thoughts in his head are not all lucid.
Some might disagree, saying that in the beginning of this novel, Montag was insane, burning down books and houses as a job, and that the whole country was insane with him. As Clarisse began putting thoughts into his head, and as Guy started thinking for himself, he became more real and therefore had awful situations happen upon him. They say the more pain you go through, the better you come out be, so the worse Montag's conditions get, the more sane he is, though he seems insane in this twisted world. Both of these ideas could be correct, but since this is an ironic novel, the ending has to end in death, death symbolism, or insanity, and Montag is quickly heading down the road to that tragic fate.
At the beginning of this novel, there is a feeling that Montag might turn his life around, and start a new revolution fit for the history books. As the story wears on, things take a turn for the worst, especially after Clarisse dies. She was his lifeline, and now he is barely hanging on. When the storyline is compared to this quote, it can be found that they are complete opposites.
Ashes to Ashes
Author's Note: This is my summative essay for the novel Fahrenheit 451. I tried to make this essay flow nice, especially from one paragraph to the next, but I am worried it might have too many sentences where I list things (Its hard for me to explain) I also put two of my vocabulary words into it, and I hope you enjoy!
Technology is fire in a world without light, a savior to all who are without it. To feed this fire is an immense risk, because it could reach past knowledge, with no intent to slow down. At that point technology is in control of society, and there is nothing anyone can do to help. The fire will grow to tremendous proportions, then burn down everything in sight, this is what happened in the novel Fahrenheit 451. When technology consumes society, the only way to rebuild knowledge is to destroy everything and start over.
The United states is a first world country, a very advanced society in the way of technology. Though this is true, the dystopic world in Fahrenheit 451 does not compare. Mechanical hounds, interactive television walls, radio sea shells to put in your ear, and self-buttering toasters seem outrageous to us now, but this book was published in 1953, so just the thought of all this new technology at that time was even more astounding, not even to mention how close Ray Bradbury's predictions were of the future. One of the things Bradbury said about the point of this novel was that "Television destroys the interest in reading literature", and that point comes across well. It showed that these TV walls have something in them that makes the person watching them feel whole, feel like they're a part of something, even though it's just a charade; a curtain covering the truth.
The advancement of technology has created a nefarious scenario, and it only got
worse.Teenagers rampage through the streets, trying to run over people, trying to run over themselves, with no care in the world if they live or die. They feel nothing, not pain, not happiness, because the future holds nothing for them. The purpose of all this technology is so no one can feel anything. There are no funerals, no one drives slower than 80 miles per hour, and no books because if you stop to feel something, whether it be joy, or sadness, it makes you think, and that is something the government of this society is terrified of. Surprisingly, this world was not always that way, there was a time of knowledge, a time where firemen saved burning houses, not set them aflame. But like it always, people got listless. They would rather read Shakespeare in magazine form rather than its original version. They would rather watch films of classic novels than read the beauty of words. People didn’t want to think, and because of that, they weren't allowed to.
Towards the end of this novel, Montag has been through almost everything, and it seems like he almost won't make it to the end. Ironically, he narrowly escapes it, when he watches his city burn down into nothing. Montag spent his whole career burning down people's houses. Not only that, but their lives, and their pasts. As soon as he makes a change and believes in what is right, he gets to watch his wife, and his past go down in smoke. Though it seems sad, the destroying of this society was a good thing, because that was the only way to create a new society filled with knowledge and not technology.
This novel mirrors the lifetime of a Phoenix, a mythical fire bird. It is born out of an egg, and has a lifetime of 500 to 1000 years. At the end of it’s life, it builds up a next which causes the bird and the nest to light fire and be burned to ashes. It is then reborn, and the new bird gathers up the old one’s ashes and saves them in an egg. The city in this novel has been burned down, giving it a chance to be started anew, but still keeping some remembrance of the knowledge that snuck itself into the city, like the ashes of the Phoenix being kept with the new one. It is also said, that since the life cycle of this bird is everlasting, it is immortal. Immortality is the definition of knowledge, one piece of information being passed on for generations. In the last few pages of this book, Montag finds himself among some of the greatest pieces of literature of all time, but in the form of outcasts, like himself. They travel on, wearing the masks of humans but carrying the words of Einstein, and Plato. One of them, Granger, compares them to the Phoenix, but points out one enormous detail that separates them; They know the mistakes they've made, and eventually, they won’t have to burn themselves into nothing, because there will be no reason to.
Society is a dangerous word, it has to be in complete balance, and if something makes it unbalanced, it could all go down in flames. Unfortunately, the society in Fahrenheit 451 experianced it all too well. Very few people realized how wrong their ways were, and that was not enough to change what had already been set. The bombs dropped on the city were meant to harm it, and it did, but it was also a blessing. It gave the people who were trying to do something to change it a chance to make things right, and leave their old mistakes in the ashes.
