Living Life Isn't Just Surviving

Author's Note: This is my final essay for Fahrenheit 451. I tried doing a more positive message this time.

An empty, hollow shell of what once was, mindlessly doing what is supposed to be done and not even thinking that this could be wrong. Montag is this perfect, mindless zombie until he meets Clarisse, the one who breathes life back into the dead and awakens him to the nightmare world his life has become in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Montag finds a visceral feeling what he must do. He must save the books that have been outlawed and memorize them for future generations. It's this ultimate quest for the true meaning of life that this novel really speaks to. Life has a greater value than any earthly material and is the most just cause mankind has ever imagined.

People used to value life so much that taking a life was blasphemy and the throwing away a life was the biggest of tragedies. Ray Bradbury twists this notion until it's completely unrecognizable. With people running over others with their cars and not caring whether that person lived or died, or purposely driving recklessly because they don't care if they live or die. In normal society these things are exceedingly rare but in Fahrenheit 451 these strange happenings are given almost no thought because they happen so often. These deaths really show how life is the theme of the novel. If everyone else is suicidal why does Montag choose a different path? He's trying to find the true meaning in life.

There is no other reason that Montag and the other scholars would sacrifice everything they have, other than for life in its purest form. They used to kill people just for owning books, which contained ideas. They thought this was all fine and dandy, until they got too curious and read the books. What they saw was ideas and it's these ideas that fuel life. They abandoned their old lives and memorized the books to carry on life and to awaken those they met who were dead to the world. Living with a dead mind isn't living at all.

Having a dead mind is sought after by the weak and they try to force it onto the rest of society because they fear the challenges that come with life. The standard fireman in Fahrenheit 451 is a perfect example of this weak mind. They do as told and fear the books that represent the truth in life. They react violently and burn the books and the ones that own them because they live a true life. Their twisted vision sees life as evil and death as good. They don't care what happens to them. It's why Montag ultimately sacrifices his own sanity for the cause of life. No earthly sensation or material can compare to life in its purest form.

Living can be a Burden

Author's Note: This is an outlook on Montag's life and the way I viewed it while reading the novel. I also include what I think is going to happen because to me it seems like the most likely explanation of what could happen.

Sometimes living isn't the best thing people can do. It can drive you to insanity or cause you question yourself at every turn. Death at least gives you peace and solace. Montag is in this situation. After killing Beatty and fleeing the scene of the crime he feels lost and confused. He undermined his entire world by killing the Captain, and it was an ultimate act of defiance that he wasn't ready to make.

Montag had been making decisions for the good of knowledge and life, but he wasn't ready for a real confrontation like the one Beatty presented. Montag's sub-conscious mind went into overdrive and chose simply to survive the situation whether he really wanted to or not. It was just a visceral response that he didn't want to die and so ended up killing in order to survive.

The way Montag killed Beatty is one of the most ironic parts of the book. Beatty lived by fire and worked with it day to day, but it was his downfall. Fire is a hungry beast. One minute your friend, the next it's devouring you whole. Sadly, no one being can control fire, and it ended up killing Montag's strongest source of inspiration and reason; Faber.

Faber convinced Montag that life and knowledge were worth the risk of getting caught, but now that Montag has killed he has desecrated the sanctity of life. Life is the biggest sub-theme in this novel and by committing this profane act Montag may have just pushed himself over the cliff into the dark abyss of insanity. He will try to escape the authorities and save his precious books but it will never work. His mind has been pushed to far and is turning against itself. It is only a matter of time before he will have lost all sanity and will be nothing but a shell of his former self.

Patriotism at its Finest

Charging over on open plain, bullets flying over-head like strange, deadly insects. Not many Americans get a chance to ever experience this because they fear it. Soldiers and veterans are the best America has to offer because they have the courage to either face their fear or they don’t have a choice but to face it. When people ask “Does patriotism still matter?” the answer is the most obvious one on the planet. Of course patriotism still matters; this wouldn’t be America without it.

Almost every person in this country has a deep love of this country even if they have immigrated from somewhere else. They love this country because of what it stands for and how it got here. We stand for freedom and liberty, and singularly changed the world. Veterans are the symbol of this country and inspire all Americans, whether born here or not.

Without the inspiration that our veterans of foreign wars provide, this country would feel a lot less safe. Veterans inspire younger people to join the military to help keep this country safe and free, needless to say, without those new recruits we might even have an invasion of U.S. soil by other power hungry countries.

Veterans mean a lot to me because they are a source of inspiration and stories that they bring back. Much of the older generations of my family have served and the tales they tell are just awe-inspiring. Four of my great uncles served in WWII and one was stationed in Okinawa. My grandfather was about to be shipped off the day after the war ended. My grandpa’s business partner was actually shot down over China and served as a POW for three years. He didn’t get to see his first born son for a year.

These are just some of the stories of people that gave part of their lives to this country, trying to make it safe for the rest of us. Most people could never give all of this up for our country. Veteran's give all they have and more so it’s for all these reasons and more that patriotism will always matter.

Strength

Strength is a common idea but the meaning goes deeper than most people's comprehension. The common facet of strength is physical power like having muscle and being able to lift heavy objects. Like a diamond, strength goes much deeper than the surface of physical capabilities and it is this inner strength that is cursed to fail humanity every time it is drawn upon.


Strength of the mind and heart fail when they are most needed. Power of the mind cannot be relied upon to grasp the fragile balance of what is good and what is bad. For example someone who is considered a bad person may think he is doing good and is only thought as bad by the majority of the people. Others may think of him as good. The mind creates it's own reality but it doesn't have the strength to continue when faced with Truth. Good and bad are only views of perception and Truth cannot be perceived incorrectly and so this shuts down the mind's filter thus driving humanity insane.



The heart fails in pureness. Love cannot be absolute for the heart's curiosity is like the mind's. It wanders from place to place never staying in one place for long. You can tie it down with all sorts of promises and vows but they will not ring true for long. In the end nothing is eternal. We cannot use the power of our frail mind to force our heart to love, even though we delude ourselves into thinking we can. This is the way the heart fails our mind which fails our body and our spirit.

Napolean's mind and heart are what failed him in George Orwell's Animal Farm. His heart turned away from love and was forced to fill that hole in his heart with the lusty greed for power. As this was slowly happening his mind was becoming addicted to the absolute control he had over the entire farm. Like how drugs mess with a person's mind the control and power are turning Napolean into a tyrant. Before this power he was just an ordinary pig but afterwards he was worse than the former master of the farm Mr. Jones. His strength of mind and heart destroyed him as they destroy all with absolute control.

Harmony: Humanity's Goal

A response to I, Robot, a novel by Isaac Asimov

The ancient Chinese symbol of the Yin and Yang represents the balance that is our reality and that in one side of the world we created its opposite is always present. Take life and death for an example. When we are born the miracle of life happens, but the space we take up kills something else. When we die life is crushed and extinguished but we free up space for something else to come into this world. This perfect harmony represents the world Isaac Asimov created in I, Robot, a world in which humans aren’t the only sentient beings anymore as they have created robots in their own image.

Robots and humans are opposite sides of the spectrum and yet they work with one another to stay alive in the eternal struggle for existence. Though the robots can think for themselves, they must adhere to the three laws of robotics or risk complete destruction of their positronic brain. They cannot harm a human or by inaction let a human come to harm. This is the first law of robotics and the most important. This law was created to prevent robots from taking over the world, and so keep the balance of life and death, but sadly this law is flawed. If a human were about to harm another human what would the robot do? He cannot harm the attacker but also by inaction he cannot let the victim come to harm. The dilemma would cause a catastrophic meltdown in its brain.

Besides just following the three rules of robotics robots have to do a specific job they were built for because humans first created robots to make their lives easier, and to take the dangerous jobs for our species. This relationship didn’t last long. Soon robots are cleaning households going into space and helping calculate Earth’s economy. This total takeover wasn’t noticed by the majority of the populace because it happened over a extended period of time. One group of humans saw the takeover happening over and tried to raise awareness but sadly they failed. This group called The Society of Humanity had powerful insurgents all over the globe. Still, even though they had strong influence, no one believed them. Soon the Machines controlled Earth’s economy and were plunging it into a dark abyss of stone age times.

The Yin and Yang is the symbol of our existence, for it represents the delicate balance of all things living or dead. Robots fall into this balance along with humans in this novel. Isaac Asimov shows us, with a perfectly written irony, that our heavy reliance on our free-thinking clones, so to speak, will upset the balance of nature and destroy our chances at a prosperous future.

The Adventures Tom Sawyer, A Book of Cycles

Everything goes in cycles. Life and death constantly go around and around in their endless dance on the edge of human understanding. One of the oldest cycles for humanity is the cycle of innocence to experience but Tom, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, goes in cycles of innocence to the point of idiocy and never reaches experience but instead is stuck in his innocence for the entirety of the novel.

Tom doesn't know anything but how to be innocent. In the novel Tom never does anything that seriously bad even though he is always causing little troubles. When Tom isn't innocent, he is busy being a bumbling idiot. He gets himself and Becky lost in a cave, but after awhile his innocence returns and he stumbles across the hole to freedom of the darkness. After escaping the cave Tom's innocence once again drives him to search for the chest of gold. Eventually when Tom and Huck finally have the gold, they can't just make it plain and simple. Their idea of funny is idiotic so they must make it a huge surprise at an important dinner, which is very childish.

The cycle of innocence to the point of idiocy is very common in small children. This cycle applied itself to my little cousin. She loved to play with her toys and she was very cute, but one day she was running around the pit where the fire was the night before with her brothers and sister when she fell in. She had third degree burns on her hands. She was innocent when she played with her toys and an idiot when she started playing around the fire. She recovered and soon her innocence was back and full-fledged.

Mark Twain wrote this novel to teach small children not to fall into the cycle of innocence and idiocy. The author needs a unique writing style for this age group so he makes it strongly smell of romance which is perfect to the developing mind. Romance is perfect to little girls but for young boys it's Tom's adventurous spirit that makes them bite and hold on for the ride. Sadly, for older and more mature children this childish story is vigorously repelling.

The the entire idea behind this novel is to teach a lesson about cycles. Especially the cycle that is most dangerous for children, which happens to be the one Mark Twain writes about, but sadly this cycle applies itself to Tom and many of the people. Innocence and idiocy are total opposites and yet they work together on a daily basis. This novel should only be read by children for an escape from reality.

Deciet in Tom Sawyer

Deceit plays its cards in many shady aspects of this novel. Tom tries to deceive every elder that tries to help him thinking he is doing the best for himself, when he is actually separating himself from people who might help him in the future. The ability to deceive is one of the darkest parts of human nature. It starts as a little white lie then grows to consume the poor soul that it resides in and as it slowly grows bigger and bigger, the tree of lies can withstand even the fires of truth.
Tom’s need for deception is a drug for his undeveloped mind, but before the tree grows too big, Tom witnesses something that burns that seed into oblivion. Seeing Injun Joe murder the doctor and then use deceit to cover his trail shakes Tom, but does nothing to his addiction to lying. It isn’t until Injun Joe is caught and the power of his lie fades, that Tom realizes that deceiving people doesn’t work and it can lead to some serious trouble.
Even though we know that deceiving people doesn’t always work, humanity still uses it to con the lesser mind. People try to hide the shadows of their personality, like deceit, but the question is, why do we despise ourselves? It is only part of our nature, but the answer is that our instinct to survive knows the danger deception can wreck upon the body and mind.
Tom Sawyer’s encounters with deceit steadily increase, and so does his knowledge about it. With luck, and a little bit of instinct hopefully Tom’s treacherous ways will leave him. We must thank Injun Joe for teaching Tom this value able lesson.