Fahrenheit 451 Climax Analysis

The climax of Fahrenheit 451 was reached when Montag turned the flamethrower on Beatty, which killed him within seconds. To clarify, the climax of a story is the point where there is a turn of events; it is the moment with the highest amount of action. Beatty was met with his fiery demise soon after he lent Montag a flamethrower to burn down his home-- “And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him.” (Bradbury 113) His wife left him, he burnt his home, he killed his boss, there is no return for Montag. Undoubtedly, his past was behind him, and there was nothing he could do to get it back. Montag lost it and killed someone, an act of crime that

Montag became overwhelmed with aggression, which increased his overall unpredictability, further magnifying the notion that there was a major turn of events. The last part of the climax encompassed Montag’s meeting with the mechanical hound. “It made a single last leap into the air coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame gun with him.” (Bradbury 114) For the record, this encounter was the second most action-packed meeting Montag had in the story, preceded by only the conflict between Montag and Beatty. The hound was designed to hunt down and kill fugitives on the run, but Montag turned the tide by destroying the hound, with only a numb leg to tell the tale. The hound was viewed to be perfectly designed--to hunt and kill and do its job perfectly, without