We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says,
but everyone made equal ….

In his explanation of the history of book burning, Beatty equates deep thought with sadness, which he rejects. The immediacy of pleasure in this bookless society eliminates thought and, with it, the ability to express sadness, which is why people like Mildred carry around vast amounts of suppressed pain. As a result, emotions, thoughts, ideas and ultimately books were condensed further and further until they were little more than a series of headlines; they were ultimately eliminated altogether in favor of other, more superficial, sensory-stimulating media.

Most people stopped reading books long before they were ever burned. In the world of shallow hedonists in which Beatty and Montag live, everyone strives to be the same and "intellectual" is a dirty word. Superior minds are persecuted until they fall in line with everyone else. People who are not born equal are made equal. Funerals are eliminated because they are a source of unhappiness, death is forgotten as soon as it occurs, and bodies are unceremoniously incinerated. In this society, books are as morbid as corpses, because they contain dead thoughts by dead authors. This society idolizes fire, which represents the easy cleanliness of destruction. As Beatty explains, "Fire is bright and fire is clean."

Beatty claims to prefer the life of instant pleasure. With this snobbish air, Beatty tries to make Montag believe that firemen are essential to the happiness of the world. When Montag's response is to privately assert that he will never be a fireman again, we see how much his resolve and confidence in himself have grown. He is a quite different man from the one who just a short time ago feared that Beatty's skillful rhetoric would convince him to return to work.

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Compare how deep thought might equate with sadness. Is this consistently true? If immediate pleasure hinders our ability to think deeply, what might it also limit?

Discuss why superior minds are persecuted in today's society. Just like peer pressure eliminated books, is their a possibility that people may eliminate independent, creative thinking from the masses?

In your opinion, is it necessary to eliminate all things that are sad? Describe the advantages and disadvantages of such a system.

Do you think Beatty sincerely prefers the life of instant pleasure? What part(s) of the brain does this concept completely disregard?

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