“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are”- so what happens when those books are taken away? In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, a wayward firefighter by the name of Guy Montag comes to realize the shallow, thrill-seeking nature of his own society, eventually choosing to overcome the pressure to fit in and rebelling in want of knowledge. Throughout the book, the struggle between the need to conform to society battles characters’ internal questioning reveals how pursuing only temporary pleasures leads to a meaningless, unhappy life, an inability to process the world around oneself, and ultimately strips away what makes one human- the ability to think and make decisions about oneself. Faber’s struggle between outward acceptance …show more content…
Faber said that he “did not speak and thus became guilty [himself]” when faced with the people’s issues (Bradbury 78). Because Faber, unlike most people, had the option of free will, his decision to remain inactive in the face of a moral issue made him more ‘guilty’ than those who did not have the option to choose. Faber’s literary knowledge gave him this option to choose, which in turn made him more human and less like the almost robotic, thoughtless remainder of society. When Montag tells Faber through the green bullet that there is no reason in changing himself if he is just “told what to do,” Faber praises him for being “wise already” (Bradbury 88, 89). As Montag starts to follow in Faber’s steps and question the world around him, he too comes to realize that the main reason for changing himself was in gaining the option of free will taken from him by society. Now that Montag had a taste of being able to choose his own path in life and saw Faber’s ability to choose how he handled the information he had- even if it was by choosing to conform- he did not want to return to his former life because he saw how empty it was. Faber’s final piece of advice to Montag on the value of books was that they granted “the right to carry out actions based on what we learn” from the quality of the information and time to absorb said information (Bradbury 81). In Faber’s opinion, books provide people with the knowledge they need to be properly informed in the decisions they make about their lives. Without this source of knowledge, free will becomes detrimental and less pleasant, and is eventually eliminated altogether. Without free will, humans may as well be robots, so in a sense, this knowledge is what makes one human. Faber’s silent conformity gave him time to discover that knowledge’s real value is found in the