Meet My Character

Hello everyone. My name is Beatty. One thing you should know about me is that I don’t want people reading books. Books try to make people unhappy by using confusing ideas and ranting on to one another about who is right and who is wrong. I should know. I was a book- worm in my earlier days. The second thing you should know about me is I’m reasonably smart and intelligent. I can use higher levels of intelligent than the average person to blatantly show exactly what I’m trying to say. This is especially thanks to my reading habits of my younger self. Now that books are not only illegal but also confusing and useless to read, it also helps people to stay happy. Spread the word. What makes you happy? The third thing you should know about me is I have no remorse for others. Even though I try to convince Montag that he is happy, I don’t care much about the people who commit suicide because they cannot live without their books. This is what people assume at least. The forth thing you should know about me is I work in the fire fighting squad. We are not like the ones Clarisse mentioned to Montag a while back, the ones who put out fires. No- we do not prevent fires, we cause them. It gives me pleasure to burn books. Keeps my mind off all the derogatory day-by-day necessities in the world. That’s one of the reasons I joined “451”. In fact, I did so well, and had so much compassion for my job; they decided to give me a higher level of authority apart from just being a firefighter. Now I’m the captain of 451, and proud of it! We burn books so no one learns something new and we don’t advance in technology. Like I said, books try to make people unhappy and confused. Do not read books people! It’s against the law! The fifth thing you should know about me is I’m afraid of Clarisse. I’m afraid of people with that kind of personality and that kind of family. They feed information into her brain through heredity, so it is passed down from family member to family member. Now look at the poor girl. She walks around the city to look at things and ask questions as if she thinks people know everything about everything. She wants to know why, not how. She does this alone too. She has no friends and will always have no friends because people don’t become colleagues with people they are afraid of; they run away from them. I don’t know what her family said to her, but I can tell you this: they are all a little odd and disconnected with the world. The sixth thing you should know about me is that I think the world is underwater, and the only purpose to life is instant pleasure. Rather that is the pleasure of eating, sleeping or other explicates pleasures. This is the only thing worth living for, in my opinion. And burning books. Yes. Instant pleasure is all that shows any importance in our lives today. This is the sad world we live in. I have to go now; hope I will have the opportunity to talk to you again in the future.

Yours, Beatty