F451 Assignment #7

Beatty and the majority of people in Montag's day were extremely rule oriented and did not tolerate people attempting to step out of the box that society had put them in. We see this when Beatty is telling Montag about the dream he had involving a debate between them over books: "And you, quoting Dr. Johnson, said 'Knowledge is more than eqivalent to force!' and I said, "Well, Dr. Johnson also said, dear boy, that "He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty." Stick with the firemen, Montag. All else is dreary chaos!" (Bradbury 106). Beatty clearly believes that by letting his curiousity get the best of him, Montag was "quitting a certainty for an uncertainty", simply because he was putting his steady job as a fireman at risk to simply feed his desire of learning why some people were so fascinated by books. Because of this, Beatty tried to talk Montag into stepping back into the box that he and the majority of society lived in: "What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives" (Bradbury 107). He had hoped that this would make Montag realize that books really did cause more harm than happiness, therefore he would lure Montag back to believing no good could come from books. Once this happened, Beatty would be able to return to his everyday routine and feel satisfied that all of his men believed exactly what he believed and followed the rules he had set.