Ouch. That hurt.

Pain is something that most people try to avoid. If that's not the case for anyone reading then I suppose you can just ignore this post and go on with your life, but I digress. In general, most pain can be lumped into two basic categories: Physical and emotional. Either way, it hurts. Pain can be acquired in several different ways. Getting hit by a car, for example, would probably put a person in a lot of pain. I think there is also a potential for a lot of pain when it comes to learning the truth about who we are. If we got to know ourselves on a deep and intimate level; if we truly looked into our hearts and saw what's there, it probably would not be exactly what we would want to see. And that hurts. Ouch.

In Fahrenheit 451, Montag starts out thinking he's a fairly happy guy. He's got a good, steady job, he's got a nice wife, and he's always got a smile on his face. Until one day Montag meets his next door neighbor, Clarisse. As we the readers find out, Clarisse basically calls Montag out and says "Whoa man, are you sure you're really ok with your life?" and Montag realizes that he isn't. He is not ok at all. He doesn't know his wife much more than he knows a random stranger on the street. His job is not as honorable or enjoyable as he once thought. He watched, helpless, as an old women sacrificed her own life for the very thing that he was employed to destroy. He feels guilty because his curiosity drove him to steal illegal books and now he actually wants to read them. He reads the books and finds to his dismay that he has no way of understanding words leaping off the page at him. His boss is out to find his books and burn them before Montag has a chance to remember what they said. All of his thoughts are just turning in circles around him and he's so confused that he just wants to scream.......

ouch.

All that because he had a few conversations with his neighbor.

Clarisse made Montag realize that the person he had become was a conformist going through the mechanical life that society had planned out for him. His life and his heart were unfulfilled and barren. Discovering that he had wasted half a lifetime by filling his soul with the insubstantial fluff of a society obsessed with instant gratification and constant distraction from meaningful emotional connections hit Montag like a ton of bricks. What Clarisse showed Montag about himself put him in a world of hurt. He learned the truth about himself and what he saw was not pretty or full of Rainbows and Skittles. His world came crashing down around his ankles, buried him up to his neck, and then suffocated him.

I think as readers we often assume that the changes Montag experiences because of his relationship with Clarisse are good things. Certainly Montag becomes what we would label a "better person" or a more "open-minded" guy, but goodness! what a mess his life seems to be.

As I said before, we as humans like to avoid pain of any kind. Unfortunately for us, the process of filling our existence on this earth with actions and achievements that actually mean something usually involves a lot of uncomfortable and even painful experiences in learning about who we are and who we want to be much like what Montag goes through in the book. Therefore the question that remains is not "will it hurt?"; the answer to that is yes. The question is "is the pain worth it?". Is pain and suffering a fair price for living a life of significance? Can we get down to the nitty gritty and look at the details of our lives, even if it makes us uncomfortable? If we can do that, we bring back hope for our world. As Mrs. Stoller often says, the key is in the details. A happy life is one that is not just a facade over a bunch of fluff but rather a real face with real feelings and real meaning.


--Taylor