Learn about the ending of ''Fahrenheit 451'' by Ray Bradbury. Read a summary of the novel, review its ending, and analyze Bradbury's creative choices.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury | Ending, Summary & Analysis
Table of Contents
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Fahrenheit 451 Summary
- Fahrenheit 451 Ending
- Fahrenheit 451 Ending Analysis
- Lesson Summary
Frequently Asked Questions
Who dies at the end of Fahrenheit 451?
Montag kills Captain Beatty by burning him with his flamethrower. An unnamed and innocent man is killed by the Hound so the city can pretend that they caught Montag, even though he escaped. Everyone in the city dies when it is hit by bombs. It is unknown whether Faber, Montag's friend, was able to get out in time.
What are the main points in Fahrenheit 451?
Fahrenheit 451 has several main points. It speaks to the issues surrounding censorship and book burning. Also, it highlights the importance of history and learning from the past, as to not make the same mistakes over and over again. Finally, it stresses the importance of free thought and human connection.
What happened to Faber at the end of Fahrenheit 451?
It is unknown exactly what happened to Faber at the end of Fahrenheit 451. He tells Montag that he will leave, too. He tells Montag to meet him in St. Louis, if he doesn't get caught during his escape. Montag imagines that Faber was on a bus to St. Louis when the city was bombed.
Is Montag happy at the end of Fahrenheit 451?
Montag feels many things at the end of Fahrenheit 451. He is happy that he made it out of the city and that he found like-minded people. He is sad that his wife was in the city when it was bombed, and he is scared that Faber didn't make it out in time. He feels hopeful for the future.
What is the main message of Fahrenheit 451?
The main message of Fahrenheit 451 is the dichotomy between censorship and free thought. The society tries to make everyone happy by burning books and controlling the information the citizens have access to. At the same time, they bombard the people with overstimulating and meaningless content and danger, which keeps them distracted from asking questions, aside from a few outliers, such as Faber and Clarisse.
Table of Contents
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Fahrenheit 451 Summary
- Fahrenheit 451 Ending
- Fahrenheit 451 Ending Analysis
- Lesson Summary
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a dystopian novel set in a future where everything is censored, books are banned and burned, and people are bombarded with wall-to-wall TVs, constant noise, advertising, and dangerous activities. All of this has left them numb to the concept of death. However, some individuals, like Guy Montag, are able to break free from the mind-numbing daily life because they value the importance of free thought.
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Bradbury's Farenheit 451 is divided into three parts — before, during, and after Montag's revelation.
Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander
Guy Montag loves his job as a fireman. Burning things invigorates him. He believes he is playing a positive role in his society by burning the contraband books.
As he is walking home from work one night, he comes across his new neighbor, Clarisse McClellan. As she walks home with him, she asks him if he has read any of the books he has burned. When they get home, Clarisse leaves Montag with a burning question: "Are you happy?" He knows he is not.
Montag finds his wife, Mildred, with her seashells (earbuds) in and staring at the ceiling. After knocking an empty bottle on the floor, Montag realizes Mildred has taken an entire bottle of sleeping pills. He calls for help, and two men with a machine come and pump her stomach and replace her blood. They say they get several calls a night, and that Mildred will make a full recovery. The next morning, Mildred denies that she would do something like that.
Montag sees Clarisse every day for a week, and every day the two of them walk and talk together. Clarisse tells him that she thinks it is weird that he is a fireman, saying that most fireman would never talk to her. Then, Clarisse mysteriously disappears. At the fire station one night, Montag questions whether firemen used to put out fires. Captain Beatty brings out a book that says the service was established in 1790 to burn books. A call comes in, and the men get their gear and head out on the fire engine.
The firemen stop at an old woman's house. While searching the house, a load of books comes tumbling out on Montag, and he grabs one and tucks it under his arm. The men throw the books in a pile and douse it with kerosene, but the woman hovers nearby saying they can never take her books. Montag attempts to talk her into leaving, but she refuses. She shows them the match she has, and the fireman run out of the house before she strikes it and sets herself and her books on fire.
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Montag tries to talk to his wife, but she wants to focus on the TVs and her "family." He asks where they met, and neither can remember. She then tells him that Clarisse is dead. She was run over by a car four days ago. Montag vomits, and says he is too sick to go to work.
Captain Beatty comes over. He tells Montag that every fireman goes through what he is feeling. Beatty seems to know everything important, and he says that people stopped reading books of their own accord. He says that books and other such things led to people being unhappy, but now everyone can be happy. When Montag asks what would happen if someone brought home a book. Beatty tells him that the person would have 24 hours to burn it, or it would be burned for them. After Beatty leaves, Montag confesses to Mildred, revealing the stash of books he has hidden in the vent.
Part Two: The Sieve and the Sand
Montag spends the afternoon reading as much as he can. He remembers a man, Faber, he had met in the park once and finds the address that he had saved. With a copy of the Bible in tow, Montag makes his way to Faber's house.
Faber, who used to be an English professor, is excited to see a Bible. He tells Montag that it isn't the physical books that are important, but it is what is inside the books — the information — that counts. Montag tells Faber he wants to plant books in the houses of the firemen in an attempt to bring down the city from the inside. While Faber is scared and wants to wait for the impending war to take down the society, he agrees to help Montag. He gives Montag a seashell ear piece through which the two of them can communicate, and Montag goes home.
That night, Montag goes to work and hands Beatty a book. Beatty burns the book and says he is glad Montag made the right choice. After a game of cards in which Beatty starts confusing Montag with his talk of books, the alarm goes off and the Captain says it is a special call. When the fire engine parks, they are outside Montag's house.
Part Three: Burning Bright
In the final part of the novel, which will be further discussed in the next sections, Montag flees. He is able to escape the city, and he finds other's who have escaped before him and banded together.
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- Captain Beatty forces Montag to burn the books himself, and Montag burns everything in the house, saving the books for last.
- While Montag is wearing the flame thrower, Beatty continually taunts him until Montag snaps and kills Beatty by burning him. He turns his flame thrower on the Hound (a machine they used to track and kill book-hoarders and other criminals), killing it, too.
- Montag knocks out the other firemen and flees.
- While the authorities are searching for him, Montag cleans up at a gas station.
- After he goes to Faber's, Faber advises him to head for the river, and he gives Montag some clothes and whiskey to hide his scent.
- Montag makes it to the river, and an innocent man is killed so the authorities can pretend they have won.
- After floating far down river, Montag gets out and finds a group of men around a fire. They invite him to join them, and they all leave the city and band together. Each one of them carries books in their mind.
- Montag and the men watch the city get bombed.
- The men start moving north, following Montag's lead.
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Contrary to the fate of many dystopian protagonists, Montag was able to escape his oppressive society.
To get away, he first attacks Beatty. When he reflects back on his actions, he believes that Captain Beatty wanted to die. The Captain had quoted several books to Montag, so it was evident that Beatty was well-read. Although Beatty claimed that books were nonsense, there seemed to be a large part of him that didn't believe what he was saying. Montag questions why, if he did not want to die, would Beatty continue to provoke him when he was wearing a flame thrower. His conclusion is that Beatty did not want to carry on living.
Montag then finds a band of men waiting for him along the river. They saw the chase in the city and assumed he had gotten away when they noticed the police turn around after the Hound lost the trail at the river. The small TV they had went on to show the capture of "Montag," as the authorities set the Hound on an innocent man. The government can not let the people know that a rebel had eluded them. They need to be unquestioningly powerful.
The men in the country watch as planes fly overhead. The planes fly to the nearby city that Montag has just come from, and they drop bombs, completely leveling the entire city. Granger, one of the outliers, mentions the Phoenix, and tells the men how it rose from the ashes, just as their society will rise from the ashes of the war. However, unlike the Phoenix, men can learn, and hopefully will stop repeating their mistakes, if only enough people — people like them — can remember. Free thought and the availability of information are crucial to the progression of society.
Montag as the Phoenix in Fahrenheit 451
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The Phoenix acts as a symbol of the resilience of human civilization. Though history often repeats itself, and great civilizations come crashing down, people are always able to rebuild.
Montag acts as a Phoenix in Fahrenheit 451. He, quite literally, burns up his old life, and he starts anew, having been enlightened by books, knowledge, and friendship.
Montag as the Revelation in Fahrenheit 451
When Montag joins the men in the countryside, Granger tells him that each of the rebel men "are" one or more of the books. They have read them and memorized enough of the texts to pass them down to others, either through telling the stories or writing them down, if the time comes when they are able.
Montag memorizes two books of the Bible: "The Book of Ecclesiastes" and "The Book of Revelations." Montag's memorization of "The Book of Revelations" is symbolic of his own personal revelation and his desire to waken others and pass along information so they can experience enlightenment as well.
Bradbury's Message in Fahrenheit 451
Bradbury warns of the dangers of censorship in his novel. His society came to be the way it was because people were unhappy and offended, and they demanded censorship. The government made changes, banning this and that, in an attempt to make people happy. Eventually, they realized that people cannot be happy if they have free thought. They banned and burned everything that could inspire critical thinking, and they replaced it with mind-numbing nothingness that they shoved into the people's faces constantly. People were "happy" because they were all the same, and they never had a moment to sit, think, and reflect.
To achieve this, the government was clearly angering and negatively affecting the rest of the world. They were constantly under threat of attack, and, eventually, the enemies of the government demolished their cities with an onslaught of bombs.
Bradbury shows how free thought is necessary for society to progress and to keep history from repeating itself.
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Fahrenheit 451 is a dystopian novel written by Ray Bradbury. It warns of the dangers of censorship and acknowledges that people cannot be happy all of the time without dire consequences. The novel follows Montag, a fireman of the future, who burns books for a living. After witnessing a woman burn herself along with her books, and after finding out his strange friend, Clarisse, has died, Montag snaps and begins reading the books he has been hoarding. He teams up with Faber, an old professor he met in the park, and they make a plan to try to change things. However, Montag's wife reports him for having books, and Montag is forced to burn them all before he kills his boss and then flees the city. He manages to escape the mechanical Hound that was on his trail by floating down a river. Next, he gets back on land in the countryside and finds a band of men waiting for him. They left, just as Montag had, and each of them is a walking book. Montag, who, like a Phoenix, rises from the ashes of his old life, has memorized "The Book of Revelations" and "The Book of Ecclesiastes." He and the men watch as the city is bombed into total destruction.
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Video Transcript
Fahrenheit 451
They say when one door closes, another opens. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag closes the door on his life as a fireman and begins again as a man on a mission to think, learn, and grow. He breaks free from social constraints, realizing he wants to pursue knowledge and the meaning of happiness. But with this decision comes dangerous consequences that will force him to literally and figuratively burn his life.
Ending Summary
In Part 3, titled ''Burning Bright,'' Montag is faced with his wife's betrayal, burning his home, and murder. He is on the run, attempting to finish what he unknowingly started. He heads to his friend Faber's house with the new Hound, a robot that hunts fugitives, on his trail and decides that he will not give up on his choice to break free from his old life. With Faber's guidance, Montag heads to the river to lose the Hound. His efforts are successful, and he makes it to a camp where he is welcomed with open arms.
Montag learns each man is carrying the message of a work of literature; Montag will embody the Book of Revelation. While he is attempting to recall any information he previously retained, a bomb goes off in the city. When the dust settles, Granger, one of the scholars, recounts the legend of the Phoenix. The Phoenix was a mythical bird that would live for hundreds of years. After some time, the bird would create a funeral pyre and light itself on fire. It was said the bird would rise out of the ashes and start its journey again.
Granger continues his story by telling Montag to prepare himself to head to the city to help those in need. He's not sure what they will find, but when the time comes, they will listen and help others heal with their knowledge. As the men head toward the city, Montag realizes he is leading the group, and in that moment, a quote from Revelation comes to his mind. Everything falls into place, and Montag is ready to enact his new purpose.
Analysis: Montag as Phoenix
When Montag arrives at the walking camp, he feels like he is not smart enough to be a part of this group, but what he doesn't realize is that this endeavor isn't about knowledge; it's about perception and lifestyle. These men do not conform to society's standards of technology worship and reality TV. These men worship knowledge, free thought, and the arts. This mindset is what Montag has been seeking long before he became conscious of it.
As Granger tells Montag about the Phoenix, the reader is taken into a metaphor of passion and rebirth. While the Phoenix repeats its fate, Granger points out that humanity has something the Phoenix does not—the ability to experience something and remember it. He hopes, with their help, the men can finally help history to stop repeating itself, to stop people from hurting others, to curb the violence once and for all. Montag is the Phoenix. He literally burns his home and his previous life in order to break free and become a new Montag.
Montag as the Revelation
Montag is the Jesus figure in the story. He sacrifices his life for the greater good, which is the symbolism lying within the book he will now embody. At the end of the story, we find Montag peacefully leading a group of people with thoughts of the Tree of Life in his mind. The Apocalypse has ended in the city, and now Montag and his disciples are headed to comfort those in need with the leaves.
The ending also reminds the reader of the ongoing war that is subtly mentioned throughout the story. The people that die in the story are the ones that chose to ignore their human emotions, worship their TV walls, and deny intelligence. Montag is rewarded for his outrageous acts of rebellion, while the rest are left to suffer the consequences of the war.
Montag believed in himself and made a break for it. While it cost him his old life, his rebellion provided him the opportunity to start over. Bradbury's message is clear: we must pay attention to the world around us, grow and learn from our mistakes, and help others succeed by sharing our individual experiences.
Bradbury's Message
We leave Montag as he walks into the destruction from the war, but Bradbury aims to instill a greater lesson in our hearts. Through Montag's journey, Bradbury, like most dystopian writers, is hoping the reader will find the courage to go against the grain. Even though Montag's journey is over for now, the reader's journey could be just beginning.
Knowledge is a powerful thing, and Bradbury reminds us that the future is in our hands. Go outside, take a walk, read a book, but never let yourself get so caught up in the day-to-day madness that is conformity and routine that you forget the value of freedom from tyranny and how beautiful it is to simply live.
Lesson Summary
In Fahrenheit 451, the reader is shown a world of order that is broken down by one man who was willing to sacrifice it all for the love of wisdom. At the end, Montag and his new friends are on a mission to help those in need by sharing a wealth of knowledge that could potentially stop future wars and the repetition of madness.
We hear a story about the Phoenix bird rising from having burned itself to start again. Montag too is starting again, this time hoping to make sure the past doesn't repeat itself. Much like the Biblical apocalypse, only those that stayed true to themselves survived the war. Bradbury hopes his reader can see past the metaphor and live their lives in happiness without blindly following government or technology.
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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury | Ending, Summary & Analysis
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