Knowledge Through Fear

Author's Note: This essay was in response to how the quote "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." relates to Montag at the end of our last reading. For the opening I tried to do a fictional narrative and still add some text evidence because that has been some of my weak spots and I think I did an average job with that.

Fear. Angst. Frustration. Right, left, right, left. Your feet move swiftly across the gravel, weaving in and out of the thick trees, running for the haven without looking back. With each step strength, experience, confidence stream into your body acting as fuel in the chase of life and death. A slip, a fall, on the ground you moan. The darkness closes in and you start to go, along with all you've worked for, all you've gained. It falls to the floor and shatters to pieces, an impossible puzzle that you are left to fix, with only the knowledge that you have gained along the run. A philosopher in the world of robots, you are alone with no one to help you, yet with the fear there comes all that you have learned and it helps you start to make a dent in the monstrous challenge that lay before you. Montag and Faber, with only each other, they too try to pick up the pieces with the knowledge that they have learned and attempt to fit them together. It is in Fahrenheit 451 in which we learn that fear turns to knowledge and that fear is a necessity, or we would be lost in a world of mystery.

In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury teaches us many things throughout the text. One of the most striking things is that he puts an emphasis on how fear is one of the greatest teachers of all. With each mistake we learn to not do that anymore. With each crisis we figure out how to handle it, and once our faces are wrinkled with hardships it is then when we are all-knowing. If we run away from fear, we may be happy, but we won't know about the world around us. Embrace it, learn from it, because if you do not die from it, it will only make you stronger.

Montag experiences more fear than most of us can ever imagine. One against one hundred. An outcast against a society. With each day though, he rises above the society, for he has knowledge. His belief in literature and its capabilities gets him into trouble but comprehension of the world starts to overwhelm his formerly brain-washed mind. Understanding is what we really all strive for in Life and through Montag's struggles he gains it drop by drop.

"What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." Friedrich Nietzsche understood how we should view Life. We should not cower away from it, but stand tall and bare the storm, for afterwards we will be better. We need fear in our lives, for we need knowledge and fear brings knowledge along with it. If we can stay strong, we can comprehend the trees and the birds that surround us, and do what the human species is intended to do. Live, the right way.