Captain Beatty- Fahrenheit 451

Captain Beatty was known as the the captain of the fire department where Guy Montag was stationed. During this novel, Captain Beatty thinks that books are "treacherous weapons", but you can tell that during this time that he lived he was once a book reader too. You can tell that he did read a lot of books because he was well spoken when he was talking with Montag. While he was talking he would use the tones of irony, sarcasm, passion, and regret in the same conversation. I had always wondered why Beatty would use those tones when out of all people he hated books. He hated books and he hated people that read books which does not seem right.

When Bradbury wrote, "But many of those who sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors" (Bradbury 54 & 55). Beatty is explaining how the firemen came to be. As you can see Beatty has a vast majority of knowledge that he uses in his sentences. He sounds like he is very intelligent, but he acts like he does not care about what happens to the books. Just like when he was talking about Hamlet, a fireman should not talk about poetry, firemen just sign up to burn them. Beatty was a very intellectual guy, but decided that he did not want to be like that and hates anything and everything about books. By the language that Beatty uses you can tell that at one point in his life he would of had to care about books. Captain Beatty did not want to step out and become smarter by reading, instead he decided to go with society and become somebody who he really was not.

Bibliography

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.