In last weeks discussion of Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes, I briefly talked about how the apes had split the roles of society based on race. A brief recap, the Gorilla’s are the strongest apes, often taking up army, police, and enforcement roles. The Orangutangs are the gatekeepers of knowledge and the major inventors/scientists of ape society. And finally, the Chimpanzees who are often seen as the laborers, menial workers, and “common” citizens of a ape kind. In our classroom discussion about these rolls, my professor made an astute comment about the novel. To summarize, he made a claim that not only are the roles of society assigned to apes at birth, but they see no need or have any desire to deviate from these rolls. For example, in Boulle’s novel, Gorillas will never question being hunters, bruisers, or police figureheads. They follow orders because that’s what society asks of them, and they see no need to change that role they fulfill. They are static in their philosophy. Gorillas hunt and Orangutangs innovate. This is the way of the world. They enforce rules and authority on the people because that’s what they’ve been taught from birth. But what if one of these Gorillas decided to start thinking about the role they occupy? What if they decided that they no longer want to enforce the rules of the state forcefully with an iron first? Enter Guy Montag.
In my 26 years on this spinning cerulean orb, I had never read Ray Brad Bury’s Fahrenheit 451 before seeing it on my Spring 2019 reading list. As a lover of science fiction, and literature, this a true shame that I’ve now remedied, The novel is a portrayal of a future dystopia in which people have been become so detached from one another, that they would prefer to have the television talk with them than another person in the room. Reading and owning books is now against the law, and anyone caught with them is either killed or sent to jail. Firemen in this world no longer put out fires, but instead go to any location containing books and burn them to the ground. Our protagonist, Guy Montag, is one such Fireman. Society has given him the role of an authoritative oppressor. and for the first portion of the novel, he’s more than happy to torch libraries and burn books “for the greater good”. It’s not until he meets an eccentric young girl, Clarese, that Montag begins to see what society has become through the explosive growth of technology and too much leisure time. After this encounter, he begins to secretly steal and read books from the houses he tasked to burn and eventually begins to question his role in society, and the heavy responsibility of what it means to be a Fireman, and the weight of what “burning” really means.
Montag’s turning point comes when he's turned his kerosine house on his superior Beatty. He’s physically burning someone who’s a threat to him, but this could also be seen as Montag severing his last link with his old life, and ultimately, with society. He’s decided that the oppression of free thinking and knowledge that he was tasked with undertaking was no longer something he could agree with on a moral level. His turning of the hose is also a turning of a new page. The end of this novel in which Montag joins a group of wandering scholars could be seen as the beginning of a new chapter on his road to atone for this sins of the past, and away from the authority he once served.
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