Fahrenheit 451 Epilogue

Epilogue

Sand spilled across the table and trickled steadily to the floor. A cold breeze crept through the cracks of the unfinished building and scattered the sand across the room. Unable to recall any more of the Bible, Montag pushed his pen and paper aside and began to think about his life with the society of scholars and rebels after the war.

The bravest people of the group ventured into the ruins of the city to find survivors. He was one of the first to search the debris but was horrified to discover that he couldn't find where his house once stood. They quickly realized that they were the only survivors.

Montag and the others began to construct their own city by the river from the rubble they collected. In the beginning, fights broke out among the group on whether they should be building more shelters or start writing down the books they had memorized. They eventually compromised that during the day they would scavenge the remnants of the city, farm for food, or craft necessities and when they could no longer see their hands in front of them they would return to their small town and write by candlelight. Now they only talked about their future and how they were going to get the entire country to join them. They rarely talked about the war. Montag theorized about what it was really about; no one seemed to care.

In the center of the makeshift town was The Library. Handmade pens and paper were kept safe there. Half written books and poetry filled the uneven shelves that lined the walls and even more were strewn across the tables. Whenever someone would remember a fragment of a book they would go to the library to write it down before they could forget. Candles weren't allowed in The Library.

Montag snapped out of his thoughts and stood up from his cement block that served as a seat. He walked around The Library and flipped through a few books, reading the paragraphs that were jotted down. He was desperate to write again but he couldn't find a single grain of sand no matter how hard he searched The Library. He was about to take his hunt outside when he had a brilliant idea. What if he wrote a book of his own?

Books had been written about wars in the past to stop the same wars from happening again. Why couldn't he do it now? He would write about how Beatty wanted to make people happy at his own expense, how Dover Beach made Mrs. Phelps cry, how Faber guided him through the Seashell, how Clarisse taught him to live, and his wife, Mildred. He would write about how it was before and yet after literature. The world he and the scholars would create needed to know the consequences of censoring the past. He could prevent the future from repeating his mistakes and teach them to speak out against unjust acts.

Montag quickly grabbed his pen and pressed it down onto a blank sheet of paper. He began to write: "It was a pleasure to burn."