Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

Burning Bright
After witnessing the anonymous scapegoat’s death on the television, Granger turns to Montag and ironically remarks, “Welcome back to life.” He introduces Montag to the other men, who are all former professors and intellectuals. He tells Montag that they have perfected a method of recalling word-for-word anything that they have read once. Each one of them has a different classic stored in his memory. Granger explains that they are part of a network of thousands of people all over the country who have bits and pieces of different books stored within their memories. Granger says that Montag is important because he represents their “back-up copy” of the Book of Ecclesiastes. Finally, Montag’s reading has been validated by someone.
Granger says that his group is waiting for humanity to become ready for books again so that they can be of some use to the world. He says that the most important thing they have to remember is that they are not important in themselves, but only as repositories of knowledge. Granger says they are prepared to wait for as long as it takes and will pass their books down through succeeding generations if need be. He accepts the possibility that someday there will be another Dark Age and they will have to go through it all again, but he is confident about man’s determination to save what is worth saving. They put out the fire and walk downstream in the darkness.
Montag searches the other men’s faces for some glow of resolve or glint of hidden knowledge, but he is disappointed. Seeing this, the men laugh and tell him not to judge a book by its cover. Montag tells them that he left his wife back in the city and worries aloud that something must be wrong with him, because he does not miss her and would not be sad if she were killed. Granger tells him a story about the death of his grandfather, stressing that his grandfather, a sculptor, was a man who “did things to the world.” Granger believes that when people...