Once Montag saw how much the books meant to the old woman, he took it upon himself to find out exactly what she was protecting. He began reading and never looked back, reading as much as he could before he had to surrender his books to the government. After being exposed to new ideas, Montag begins question society and himself. Being exposed to new ideas helps Montag find his humanity and he begins to feel guilt for all the books he took pleasure in destroying. After the woman dies in the burning building, Montag reads her books and says, “Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books”(Bradbury). Without the government telling him what to …show more content…
Montag’s wife is an example of how society reacts to someone who claims to have new ideas. She quickly shuns him, tells him books aren’t people and that do nothing to help. Montag believes the opposite and begins analyzing how big of an impact books would have on society. He challenges group ignorance by claiming that,"Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!”(Bradbury). This passages references Plato’s allegory of “The Cave” in which Plato relates society’s group ignorance to a group being stuck together in a cave. Becoming enlightened allows prisoners of society to be free from the cave, and Montag is suggesting that books will bring his society out of the pit of ignorance. Ending censorship not only allows modern society to recover from ignorance, it also gives future generations the ability to access important information. Nadine Smith relates the book’s ideas to real life, stating that, “a teacher can use instances such as these as history lessons, explaining to students how ideas about race have changed over the years. Many people know that the Nazis burned books that challenged their political