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.