In Fahrenheit 451, Captain Beatty is pretty much the head of all the fireman. Being the man that is head of all book burning, you could understand that he must be around books more than anyone else and that he really knows the most about literature and what is inside it, compared to the other fireman. Beatty probably loved literature and books to a great extent at an earlier age with his vast knowledge of it all. Beatty realized from early on in the book that Guy Montag was different than the rest of the fireman. He was especially interested in books and literature and Beatty saw this. When Guy Montag steals a book from a lady's house, Captain Beatty comes to visit him the next day. Beatty goes on this big long spiel about how reading is bad. You cannot get any form of information from books because they are all lies. His speech is really ironic, though, because Beatty is trying to explain just how horrendous books are and what they can do, by giving examples from different pieces of literature(Bradbury 54). Why would he try to just put gasoline on the fire in Montag's mind? I mean, he is obviously doing this because he wants everyone to be the same. When there are differences within a society, there are most definitely disagreements. Now the head officials of this society think this is the end of the world because I guess they suppose no one would get along. They really just need to help people to accept difference and have a social, peaceful tolerance instead of blinding the whole society and censoring everyone from literature. Beatty just wants to make his life easier and wants to live the way he wants to live. He is very contradictory with his statements about literature when he knows so much about the subjects and talks so passionately. I think it probably threw Montag off just the slightest bit where he knew his goal was worth pursuing; self completion.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 2003. Print.
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