A wife overdoses on drugs, much to her husband's distress; a woman watches as the room she is in is doused with kerosene before taking it upon herself to light the first match; a Fire Captain hands a flamethrower to one of his subordinates and orders him to point it at him – at the Captain himself – and pull the trigger. These three suicide attempts – one successful, one unsuccessful and the other depicted as murder – embody the theme of self-destruction that runs through Ray Bradbury's “Fahrenheit 451,” and each represents a different aspect of that theme: self-destruction involuntary self-destruction, voluntary self-destruction and voluntary self-destruction in order to prevent involuntary self-destruction. Mildred Montag's overdose implies a dissatisfaction with the world as it is and a desire to escape to something less real, more passive, a kind of indirect and involuntary self-destruction. The old woman's voluntary death brings immense satisfaction with the world that has been taken from her, and no desire to live a life without some element of that world in it. And Captain Beatty's death at the hands of Guy Montag represents a combination of both of the above: a man torn between affection and duty, between an affection for what he destroys and for the process of destruction itself. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Mildred's self-destruction is a common trait of most citizens of the society depicted in the novel, and hers is a path that Montag risks following - at least until the moment curiosity takes over and opens the book cover. “I'm a cowardly old fool,” says the English professor Faber, being the placid man Montag will turn into if he doesn't immediately rebel against the system that oppresses him. “Proof of my terrible cowardice: I lived many years alone, throwing images on the walls with my imagination.” Faber is what Montag will become if he allows Mildred to desensitize him. “She was starting to scream now,” we are told of Mildred when Montag looks at his wife with new eyes after their argument, “sitting there like a wax doll melting in her own heat.” Mildred's self-destruction is of the involuntary, passive kind: she doesn't so much destroy herself as allow herself to slowly rot. Her world is a dream world for which she abandons reality: she is unconscious when we meet her, having overdosed on pills designed to make her sleep and recede into dreams. When she comes to, she is full of denial and says she would never do such a thing. She later gets her name put on a TV show and is literally absorbed into an imaginary world. And finally she replaces her husband with the cartoon White Clowns to the point that Montag asks her: “Does the White Clown love you? …Does your 'family' love you, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?” The answer, of course, is no, but like so many things between Montag and Mildred, it remains unspoken. Indeed, speaking out loud is the means by which Montag almost engages in his own self-destruction: he recites a poem to Mildred and her friends, and reduces one of them to tears, which causes the others to turn against him . The anger he provokes causes his downfall. But this may not surprise him, much less Faber, who listens to the poetry recital through Montag's earpiece: "You'll ruin everything," he insists, "Shut up, you fool!" – but Montag persists, the poem is read aloud and later, after the women have left his house, they turn to the authorities and point the finger at him. “It was kind of silly, quoting the poem simply andfree like that," warns Beatty Montag during their final confrontation. "It was the act of a damned snobbish fool. Give a man some verses and he thinks he's Lord of all creation. Ironic, given that only a few moments later, when Montag has a flamethrower aimed at him, it is Beatty who quotes the poem: “Why don't you burp Shakespeare in my face, you clumsy snob? 'There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, why am I so strong in'? honesty that they consider me an idle wind, which I do not respect!'” This is not the first demonstration of Beatty's literary knowledge. He previously references the myth of Icarus and Daedalus, quotes Jonathan Swift and alludes to biblical passages reference to religious persecution made by the aforementioned old woman before setting herself on fire. How is it possible that a man who conducts investigations into houses with the aim of burning the illegal and outlawed books in their possession, knows so much about literature himself? Furthermore, how does he still manage to show a visible level of affection for literature – an affection that Montag shares but which, unlike Beatty, he is not allowed to show to the outside world? With his knowledge of and resentment of literature, Beatty embodies the conflict between the destruction of literature and its appreciation - and so his actions and speeches indirectly give voice to the reasons why the burning of literature is self-destructive, even if his actual words dictate it. because it's a good thing. “Not all are [born] free and equal, as the Constitution says, but all [are] made equal,” Beatty tells Montag in one of the many examples of revisionist history accepted by the society of this world. "Every man is the image of the other, then everyone is happy, because there are no mountains that make them cower, against which to judge themselves." Herein lies the essence of the evolution of book burning, as well as the essence of its self-destructive nature. Like Mildred's involuntary self-destruction, book burning evolved not from an active opposition to literature, but from a passive attraction to other materials. “The world has become filled with eyes and elbows and mouths,” Beatty tells Montag. “Films, radio, magazines, books [were] reduced to a sort of pastry norm. …Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows. …School [was] shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, stories, languages ​​abandoned, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost entirely ignored.” Essentially, Beatty details the devolution of literature – indeed, of “thought” itself and its replacement with graphic inputs, films, drawings and photographs. “More cartoons in books. More photos. The mind drinks less and less. …Books, so the cursed and snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder the books stopped selling, critics said. …Here you go. It didn't come from the government. There were no dictates, no declarations, no censorship,” Beatty says of the process by which the books were banned, before adding the qualifier: “to begin with.” These three words – “to begin with” – embody everything that is self-destructive about the book burning of the society represented in the novel. It is self-defeating because, most glaringly, Beatty's claims regarding the validity of book burning are not reasonable. He argues that individuals in society lost interest in literature because nothing of value was being produced – books were “dishwater” – but this could not result in a total abandonment of fiction, particularly when so much value is already been accumulated by the company to begin with. with - just because no new books of any value are produced, there is no reason to abandon hundreds of years of books that have some valuevalue. More importantly, however, book burning is self-destructive because it is a violation of individuality and individual rights. Beatty uses this concept to his advantage – “all men made equal” – but here he does not add the qualifier that should appear at the end of that statement: “All men made equal, resulting in mass mediocrity, with no man given the opportunity to disrupt or ascend beyond that equality.” That is, book burning is self-destructive because it removes the individual's choice of whether or not he or she wishes to engage in literature. Of course, even if there were a world in which society lost interest in fiction and books, there would have to be some individuals who would still choose to engage in literature for pleasure. These individuals exist in this world – in the form of Montag, of course, and to some extent Beatty, and especially in the form of Faber and the group of men Montag meets outside the city – but it is simply not their right to read books that they have been taken away: they have also lost the right to choose to read books. Book burning, therefore, is self-destructive on both a physical and metaphysical level: it denies indulgence in physical literature – printed pages and words – but it also denies an individual the right to use their metaphysical free will, and in doing so, we realize that it is self-destructive because it undoes the very thing that makes us truly human. However, this is not the extent of its self-destruction, it is only the most visible extent. Worse than this destruction of literature and free will is the destruction of truth. How do we know the story Beatty tells Montag is real? In fact, we know that Beatty lies on several occasions: “When did it all start, you might ask yourself, this work of ours, how was it born, where, when? Well, I would say it all really started around something called the Civil War. This is not true, firefighters, as we know, were never employed to burn books, and no such trend occurred during the Civil War. Beatty also disputes this claim, but with another lie: “I would say it actually [started during] the Civil War. Even though our rules say it was founded first. If Beatty disputes an important element of his own code of conduct, how can we be sure that anything in that code is true? Instead, we realize that with the above time frame for firefighters to respond, as well as other claims such as that homes have always been fireproof, the citizens of this story live in a world that has fallen victim to an imaginary past, as in the aforementioned revisionist history. The history of this society has been whitewashed, erased, lost and destroyed, reconstructed and rewritten as propaganda, and almost all actual historical truth has been lost, giving rise to a world whose very identity is characterized by a dualistic irony: a world that eschews fiction, but is almost entirely built on lies. Beatty even lets this inconsistency slip, perhaps unconsciously: he calls Montag a “clumsy snob” for reciting poetry, and calls past critics “snobs” for denouncing books. Who then believes is the real “snob”: those who love fiction or those who ridicule it? The inconsistent person believes in the truth that he struggles to hide: that he knows, somehow, that the laws he supports are a facade; which, at the very least, could not have been based on any real history and are instead a product of fiction disguised as fact. Beatty continues to explain how the book burning happened: “You have to understand that our civilization is so vast that we cannot let our minorities be upset and agitated. …Black people don't like it'Little Black Sambo'. Burn it. White people don't feel good about "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Burn it. …Don't give them elusive topics like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.” It is thanks to the sensitivity of minority groups, says Beatty, that the book burning was carried out; the government did not want any disruption from these groups. This, then, is an ironic example of a more “positive” type of self-destruction, at least from Montag and Faber's point of view: in its aim of not offending minority groups, the book burning decree instigated the creation of a new minority group that will eventually overturn it. And, what is even more ironic, to enforce that decree, the government employed firefighters, yet it is precisely one of those same firefighters who rebels against the government and against the decree that it is trying to enforce. “Every fireman gets an itch at least once in his career,” Beatty says. “What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, huh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, I had to read some to my parents. times, to know what I was talking about, and the books don't say anything! Note that Beatty didn't read books to know what they were about, but to know what he was talking about, and the books gave him answers: they gave purpose to his life, even if he he didn't realize it. "[The books say] nothing that you can teach or believe," he insists, but Beatty continually uses the content of the books throughout the novel to teach Montag about their relationship, until Montag rebels against it; Beatty, it is a teacher-student relationship. Although they ultimately become adversaries, Montag finds a sort of thematic counterpart in Beatty as, on a more personal and less social level, they engage in voluntary self-destruction together to prevent their own involuntary self-destruction , each of them suspects that they will follow in Mildred's footsteps, rotting away with passivity, so they deliberately choose to follow in the old woman's footsteps instead, to defy those who ask them not to do certain things - to also defy the laws they are sworn to uphold , to avoid dissolving into nothingness. Like Mildred, both Montag and Beatty are slowly decaying. Montag first admits to himself that he is unhappy: “I don't know anything anymore,” he says. And similarly, Beatty's violent antagonism arises from the frustration he feels with his evident and paradoxical affection for literature, and with his duty not only to hide that affection but to burn its source. Beatty, for all his long and portentous speeches, consistently reveals more about himself by what he doesn't say than by the actual words he uses: "Who knows who the educated man's target might be?" he asks, without openly acknowledging that he himself is a cultured man: “Me? I will not tolerate [an educated man] for even a minute. Here, he unconsciously points to his own feelings of self-loathing - the same feelings that ultimately drive him to order the flamethrower-wielding Montag to "Move on now, you second-hand literary man, pull the trigger." Montag obeys him, and only later realizes that “Beatty wanted to die. …He just stood there, not really trying to save himself.” With these words, Montag could easily describe Mildred, if only Mildred had taken control of her own decay instead of simply standing by and allowing it to happen to her. Unlike Mildred, both Beatty and Montag would rather be destroyed than allowed to decay. And so, they both openly and unreservedly share literature and literary allusions with other people – even though it is explicitly illegal because, since neither of them is capable of knowingly destroying themselves, they are both aware that the consequences of such actions will serve to.