Novels are important because they reveal things about ourselves that we are to prideful to face. Humanity strives for perfection in a world were we are imperfect in everyway. The result is a world of unsatisfied, selfish, and prideful people. The book presents us with this question and then answers it “Do you understand now why books are hated and feared” Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless”.
We are too prideful to let other people see that we have blemishes, and that we mess up. Instead, we would rather live a life trying to cover up our mistakes than admit that there is wrong in the world. Society has bought into the lie to create a picture perfect world, but making mistakes is how we learn in life. Faber an old English college professor says to Montag, “You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks.
By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you will never learn. ” Beatty says that novels are hard to read, but maybe this is an excuse to protect himself from the things that they might reveal. Beatty says that novels are difficult to read because the meanings are not evident. That is the beautiful and dangerous thing about them. Beatty was once a lover of novel, and in fact he feasted on them. Eventually though he came to a conclusion that books are worthless.
It is interesting that Beatty who was once a lover of books changed when he faced trials in life came. Beatty hates books because they have several different opinions and views on the meanings, they do not give black and white answers so people can interpret them in whatever way they desire, and they are hard to understand and follow because of this reason. Seems like a valid argument, but we are missing the root of the issue of why he hates them. It is interesting that Beatty was once a lover of books, and how quickly he changed when he faced trials in life.
Naturally he tried to find his answers in the one thing he loved most which was the books that he read. When he found that his books would not give him the answers that he desired he decided to destroy them with fire. Beatty says in the book to Montag, “These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes them want to live in other ways they can never really be. ” Beatty only sees novels as made up people and societies that make real life look unappealing and makes the reader long for something that they cannot have.
Beatty does not understand that these made up societies and people are meant to be fictional because there is a greater message than their appearance. Even if Beatty did not understand all the meanings that the book has to offer he will still have one thing he takes away, and that is the emotion that the book created. Tim O’Brian one said “The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about what the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.
Books may not have all the answers, but for a short time they can take you to a world where life seems right where it should be in the midst of all the chaos. On the flipside, Faber an old English professor, who dedicated his life to literature, stated that books are important to him because of quality, the leisure to digest it, and the right to carry out actions based on what you have learned from the result so the first two. Quality, as he describes has texture, pores, and features that tell detail.
This is the meat of the book and this is how the story is formed as a sort of setting. After this has been shown the reader will take the pleasure to retreat to their favorite spot in order to crack open the contents and let the story unravel. When the book is finished, all of the emotions flood into the reader’s head, and they float in the world the novel left them for them. When they finally come to their senses the reader feels that they must conform to a specific character.
However, none of this can happen if the writer doe not write something that the reader can enjoy. Faber talks about the three kinds of writers of literature, “The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. ” This is a harsh analogy, but it is something to consider especially when coming from Beatty’s point of view that books have no purpose. Beatty states, “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it.
White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book. ” Beatty is trying to create a society were no one has to face the facts of life, when Faber is saying that there is so much to gain from learning from ourselves. When we become ignorant we will not let the novels speak into our hearts and reveal what we have been blinded to, so we must humble ourselves so we can see ourselves and the world as we were meant to.
