Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is one of the most directly shocking, insightful, and relatable of all literary works regarding dystopian societies. Written during the era of McCarthyism, Fahrenheit 451 is set in a United States of the future, is about a government that has banned books and a society where books are illegal and constantly watches television. This society believes that being intellectual is bad and that a lot of things that are easily accessible today should be censored. However, Guy Montag, a fireman who discovers books and has a spark of desire for knowledge awaken within him. Unfortunately his boss, the hostile Captain Beatty, catches on to his newfound thirst for literature. A man of great dishonesty, he sets up Montag to ultimately have his home destroyed and to be expulsed from the city. On the other hand, Beatty himself was once an ardent reader, and he even uses literature to his advantage against Montag.
Captain Beatty said to Montag, “Coloured people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs. The cigarette people are weeping. Serenity, Montag. Peace, Montag,” (Bradbury 33). When he said this to Montag, he was explaining that the only way to keep peace in the world was to burn the books that challenged peace. Beatty is the ideal antagonist for Fahrenheit 451 primarily because his great cruelty and insensitive personality unpleasantly contrasts Montag’s more sensitive nature.
After, Beatty is explaining to Montag why fire is the best way to cause destruction without making a mess at the beginning of part 3. “[Fire is] perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did… It’s a mystery… Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences… clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical” (60). Montag hates Beatty to the point of wanting to kill him, and with a cruel twist, uses Beatty’s own wisdom to kill him with flames. Bradbury uses irony to show that Beatty’s own advice is utilized against him to kill him with a flamethrower. A flamethrower at his adversary, Beatty simply “just stood there, not really trying to save himself, just stood there, joking, needling” (64). Beatty ultimately gives up his life to Montag, deprived of true passion and joy in life, “Beatty wanted to die” (63).
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Captain Beatty is one of the most critical characters in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: he is expertly cruel and malicious, expert at twisting the truth into a ton of hypocrisies, and ultimately give up his own life. While Beatty attempts to continue the holocaust of books that his generation had started, in reality he is only depriving himself of a world of knowledge, imagination, and insight. Beatty proves that giving up ones dreams and aspirations may be the easy way out of conflicts and insecurities, but will repeal the marvelous revolutions that can be brought upon by one with the will and determination to persevere.
