I need help to understand what this means... any help is welcome (anyone know any websites than define quotes like this?)

"Those who don't build must burn." ~ Faber.
Thanks!
~ tapdancer

Anyone..... please help!

My guess would be that almost anyone needs to be doing something. If not willfully directed to be positive, it will most likely turn out negative.

That sounds right.... I found something that says something about how maybe Montag thinks he is now going to act like a juvenile deliquent, since he is now going against the law. Does that sound right to you?

but isn't destruction just another form of creation?
"Streaks of light came in through the closed shutters where they worked with the seriousness of creators - and destruction after all is a form of creation" - Graham Greene, The Destructors

Destruction is the negative form of creation.

Whoa, that's cosmic.

To oversimplify. I think creation builds, or adds; destructions destroys, or takes away. When you create, there is a positive -- something real. When you destroy, there is something negative, an absence of something.

Part of chaos theory is that all the destruction IS a part of creation. But I think what destruction does is to "create" a climate or condition where creation can occur.

This is part of the reason political and religious discourse often are so harmful -- they can tend toward destruction, rather than creation.

This is why good literature (a tradition in which Bradbury participates regularly) is so great. It creates. Sometimes literary criticism is great, also; but it can tend toward destructiveness, rather than creation.

Remember the allusion to "Ecclesiastes" and (many times for) change metaphors that pour out of each portion of the book!

Montag the fireman becomes the consummate romantic reading poetry to the women. Mildred is filled with drink and drugs, then pumped clean, awakened the next morning hungry for anything and everything ('til back into her stupor). Beatty quoted scripture, religious and otherwise, yet remained the superstar burner. The sparkling Clarisse, only 17 and "crazy", unbalanced a pillar of the dystopia by asking him "Are you happy?" and thus set the plot on fire. The city rose up almost whole and unharmed by the bomb's blast, paused momentarily to be seen one last time, only to invert completely and crash down into so much rubble. The bookpeople, many Harvard degrees out on the tracks and in the wilderness, became the books before ironically they destroyed the final copies. Finally, Guy, totally inexperienced in the ways of this movement of enlightenment, led the way into the city to whatever awaited.

For everything there is a season! Bradbury was subtle and, at other times, quite profound in his application of this theme throughout Fahrenheit 451. (1st clue that "metamorphosis" would drive the story, Montag was clueless of the fragrance of apricots and strawberries' source as the young woman walked next to him. >Time to wake up, Guy!)

Even after many readings, I still see new moments of these "changes" (in my own understanding and enjoyment of the novel).

I can not help but imagine RB writing this book in the UCLA library basement in 1950, typing away, running upstairs to gather in an armsful of books, absorbing an important messages from the texts, and then weaving them masterfully into the plot. (RE: The Bible, Shakespeare, Arnold, Plato, Donne, Pope, Bacon, Jonson, Swift, Blake,....)

The book ends with everything detroyed - his marriage, home, profession, the city. However, Guy Montag quotes from Revelation -"the tree of life, which bare twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruits every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations." Yin and the Yang of what had become his reality ~ inseparable from what he hoped for as the noon of the first day approached.




[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 06-11-2004).]

So is the destruction of this soceity a good thing or a bad thing? Is the destruction of something negative not positive?

Good question, which kinda makes Mr Dark's comment about destruction and creation too absolutist.
There is no such thing as destruction or creation; it is all merely a link in the continuation of this world. To say that something is created is at the same time to say that something was destroyed, and vice versa. One cannot create without destruction, and one cannot destroy without creation.
If I create a painting, I destroy the shapeliness of the tubes of paint and the whiteness of the canavass. Think of any other example you wish.
Because no one knows the future, no one can say whether the arrangement of things we normally call "creation" is a positive or a negative thing (which begs the question "positive for who?" could be positive for me, but negative for you, in which case I would call it positive, and you would call it negative, or could be vice-versa). For example, if the painting I created is then sold for me to a hypothetical character Jimmy for $1M, it was a positive thing for me. But if Jimmy was on the lookout for a painting, and bypassed your painting for mine (meaning you didn't see a penny of his), the "creation" of my painting was negative for you (say you died of hunger because of it).
All of this leads to the understanding that all things are relative.

Cheers, Translator

Wow! I've never had this much help on this before.... I thank you all very much... <3. I think all of those sound logical.... I didn't think about destruction as creation... maybe now Montag is becoming a good person (creation = good) than the bad person he was (destruction = not good.) This will majorly help me on the packet I have to do on this over the summer.... and then to take the test on it....
Thanks again! (add more if you have any more ideas...)
~ tapdancer

P.S.: I have another question, actually... what does the salamander mean on the firemen's uniform? I know about the whole ancient belief that it lives in fire and is unaffected, but is there any explanation?? thanx.