Tanner Pfeiffer Mr.

Smith English 10 D, Pd 05 05/29/11 That Which Burns Around Him Will not Burn Him Fires burn. Fires burn things. Fires burn away the memory of zeitgeists. Fires burn away the thought of anything not still held inside a mind. Fires burn away desires. Fires burn away the darkness. Fires burn away the light. Fires burn books. But they do not burn the serpentine creature crawling through their flames. For the salamander sits on top of the books as they are engulfed in the grandiose flagration. And it is satisfied; and it is content. So long as there is fire, it will remain happy. In Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the first of three parts of the book is entitled The Hearth and the Salamander, and it describes Guy Montag, a man who burns books for a living. His entire life revolves around his job as a fireman, and he enjoys his job thoroughly. He even describes the smell of kerosene as a perfume. Montag is largely ignorant of how society used to be; he doesnt know of the days when everyone read books, being social meant talking with people, and discussing ideas was the norm. His ignorance and his pleasure in burning books make him the salamander. His life is spent on top of those burning flames, those books that melt into blackness and ash, and that take with their pages secrets that may never be known again by anyone anywhere they may be. The books and his job are the hearth. They keep him happy; they keep him warm and safe. As long as he can do his job efficiently and effectively, then theres no reason

why he shouldnt be content. And so he is content. He has no problem standing outside of a burning home at night knowing that the libraries contained therein are smoking, folding, and melting beneath the weight and the pressure of those flames that have so carefully placed in their positions, like a scale reconstruction of a scene from an elaborate stage ballet. Books are unhappiness, and the discord of unhappiness must resolve to the ecstatic consonance of jubilation. For if unhappiness should pervade throughout the alleged social atmosphere of the earth, then the entire idea behind their modern society would be remiss and deconstructed from the core and the infrastructure to the very outer edges of embellishment and disguises of perfection, and it would land in a phantasm of smoggy depression. So this unhappiness must be dismissed if it be remiss, and books are a source of discontent. They are thought to bring unsettling thoughts into the minds of the populace. They are believed to confuse, to disconcert, to perturb, and to muddle thoughts of happiness. Fire burns away this insolence of ecstasy, and so therefore must be right, good, just and done with righteous intent. So why should the self-believing salamander that is Montag not sit upon the books and feel the wondrous warmth that comes from the removal of that which causes pain? Montag eventually turns away from the life of the fire elemental, however, and crawls away from his evil salamander past and the deadly hearth that has nurtured him. He turns into the more conventional, real life salamander that has learned to not stray too close to the fire for the fear of getting burned. Ray Bradbury convincingly and seamlessly ties together the themes of the story,

the plotline, and the symbolism of the hearth and the salamander in Farenheit 451. Each reference to the chosen symbols is supported and backed, and matches up with everything else that the book is saying. Montag starts out as a fire-crazed salamander and ends up as a more natural, typical salamander that has common sense. The hearth has fomented him in adulthood, but now he has crawled away from it, growing into a better person.