Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: What the Book is All About and What the Main Quote is All About

The quote “Literature is best preserved only in the mind of scholars” means that only scholars will attempt to bring literature into their lives. Throughout the story, literature is considered to be bad. Anyone who has books in the story has their house burned down to the ground. Montag steals books from a fire, reads them, and enjoys them. Once his commanding officer finds out, Montag kills him and runs away to his good friend Fabe’s house. Finally, led by Granger, they search for survivors after enemy jets drop a bomb on the city.

Montag has a job to burn down houses with books in them. He is a firefighter. During one fire, he spots a book and takes it home and shows it to his wife. He reads it, and he realizes that he actually likes the books. He has to hide them from Beatty, his commanding officer, and the mechanical hound, that searches for books. Throughout the story, Montag wonders if firefighters jobs were always like this. He wonders if firefighters used to put out fires instead of starting them. Montag also wonders if people evre read books just for the enjoyment of reading books.

Eventually, Beatty finds out that Montag has books and that he likes them. They stop in front on Montag’s house, and instead of casting a flame on his house, he casts a flame on Beatty, his commanding officer. The flames eventually kill Beatty, and all of his notions on books. Montag knows that what he has just done is wrong. But like the quote says, he believes he is a scholar, and scholars are the only ones that will let books come to them. Scholars are the only one’s that will actually read books for the pleasure of just reading books. Montag truly believes that he is one of these special blessed people.

Montag realizes that he has just killed his commanding officer, and he runs to Faber’s house while the mechanical hound is out looking for him. Montag is terrified of the mechanical hound. They decide to flee the city. On their way out, they meet a man, Granger, who decides to lead them. Enemy jets come over the city and drop a bomb on their city. Montag, Faber, and Granger survive, and they search the city to see if anyone else survived.

The effect of the bomb shakes up the entire city including Faber, Granger, and even Montag himself. The enemy jets and the bomb symbolize what the city thinks of books and it also shows what extent people will go to just to be rid of books.

The quote is one of the reasons that Montag stole the books in the first place. He was very intrigued by them. Then, when Beatty wanted to take them away from him, he felt like he had no choice then to cast flames upon him. Finally, when the bomb had been dropped on the city, it was a result of the books. All of this happened because of one little book that somebody wanted to read. Basically, the city doesn’t really think that highly of books.

In fact, you could say that the citizens of the city dislike books with some sort of a fiery passion that doesn’t necessarily exist in our society, and hopefully never will. In my opinion, you need books in society and also in life because if you didn’t have books, then where exactly would the universe be. Montag was right to read the books because books enlighten your mind and keep your mind thinking all of the time. Books are, in my opinion, a necessity in not just school, or at a job, but they are a necessity in life. They are not just a necessity for kids and teenagers, but for everybody in life.