Part 3: Burning Bright (Summary and Analysis)

In the final section of the book, Montag gets to know that Mildred and her friends betrayed him. Though Faber convinces Montag to escape, Montag believes he would eventually be arrested after he has burned his books. In the fight Montag has with Beatty, Beatty discovers the green bullet in his ear and threatens to track the source (Faber). Montag is provoked by this and throws the flamethrower at Beatty, who, surprisingly, does not resist and is burned to death. After this, Montag knocks down the two firemen who were observing him. Montag tries to escape but the Hound wounds his leg.

While fleeing with severe pain in his leg, Montag hears a warning in the Seashell asking people to look for a renegade. Even police helicopters were searching for him. While pretending to walk normally to avoid attention, a speeding car almost brushes past him. He infers from the guffaws of children that they are on their regular merry-making rounds of driving beetles (superfast cars). It occurs to him that Clarissa might have been killed in a similar fashion. En route, Montag places a few books in Mr. Black’s house and raises an alarm so that the Salamanders burn his house.

When Montag stops by at Faber’s house, he finds out from the television set that an imported Mechanical Hound is chasing the fugitive. The Hound is unassailable: “The Mechanical hound can remember and identify ten thousand odor indexes on ten thousand men without resetting.” (133). It reaches Montag’s burned home.

Montag cautions Faber to erase all traces of smell so that Faber is not discovered by the Hound. Montag instructs Faber to burn in the incinerator everything that he (Montag) has touched and then rub everything else down with alcohol.

Together, Montag and Faber make their plans for escape. Faber tells Montag to try the river. As Montag flees toward the river, he sees through the windows of the houses he passes by that the Hound is sniffing his old odor. The Hound pauses outside Faber’s house before it alters its course. Montag hears an announcement from the Seashell asking people to come outdoors and search for the fugitive.

On reaching the river, Montag slops his face with liquor, wears Faber’s old clothes, and throws his clothes into the river. The river carries him downstream. The Hound comes to the river when Montag is 300 yards away, and, having missed him, goes back.

Montag comes onto the bank of the river and, following the railway track in the darkness of the night, finds people, mostly retired academics, gathered around a campfire. They welcome him and tell him that they are renegades somehow connected with books. Each of them carries a book in their head and they are known by that name. They will teach the memorized portions to the people after the War ends, heralding a New Age of Education. If anybody is uninterested, the book will be orally handed down to their progeny till someone down the line will be interested in it. Accordingly, Montag becomes the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Montag has won his liberty. The Hound consumes another person to conceal its failure. Civilization faces a nuclear attack and the city is reduced to rubble. Montag hears that Mildred and Faber are killed.

One of the refugees named Granger makes Montag understand the significance of each one contributing to the world. Montag realizes that his contribution is only ashes, and that of Mildred was nothing significant.

Since the bomb has destroyed the old civilization, Montag moves on to see the world, and to pass down the knowledge in the books that he and the refugees had preserved.