Levels Of Success In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

Sometimes, a goal to be achieved can be reached in a way different to what you’d expected, or you might be ultimately unsuccessful. In many novels, characters experience contrasting levels of accomplishment when trying to get something done. This is the case for multiple scenes in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which takes place in a future where books are to be burned, and the protagonist, Guy Montag, inevitably starts to question whether books are truly bad. Many times when Montag tries to read a book in secret, or ask for help from someone who might have thought of him as an enemy, or when he tries to escape the society he lives in, his plan doesn’t follow through as was originally intended.

Our first example of an unexpected level of success is when Montag begins to wonder what the books he burns have in them; if they’re worth anythings. Due to this, Montag

Montag becomes a known fugitive, not only for hiding books of his own and plotting to plant them in other firemen’s houses, but he was also wanted for the murder of Captain Beatty. He runs away, the center of attention in a televised police chase, with a Mechanical Hound chasing at his heels. Montag reaches a river, and floats downstream, away from the Hound, away from the fires, away from the city. Eventually, he washes up in the countryside, and he ends up on a railroad track leading to a group of men who have memorized books, and hide out near railroad tracks, out of sight. Granger, their “leader”, explains to Montag, “the city has never cared so much about us to bother with an elaborate chase like this to find us. A few crackpots with verses in their heads can't touch them, and they know it and we know it.” (Bradbury 154). Montag probably never expected to encounter such a group, nor join them, but he did. His success had come in a way he might’ve have never