Well, I just finished Fahrenheit 451 (which if you haven't read, the title is the temperature at which book paper burn, which happens a lot in this book) and my goodness, it was interesting. This particular copy had no less than three introductions by the author. So I kind of felt like the whole plot had been given away by the time I actually got to the story, which finally began on page 33! But it actually didn't give much away...
Anyways, as I was finishing it up tonight, I realized rather surprisingly that the final message was along the same lines as the movie, Nicholas Nickleby, which I had just finished watching (and wow, I love that movie). Of course, both stories have rather different ways of telling it, but ultimately the main characters lose what they have always known and are forced to begin again. And as the Mr. Crummles, the theater man, so nicely sums it up in the end of the movie:
"In every life, no matter how full or empty one's purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it but to delight in it when it comes. And to add to other people's store of it. What happens if too early we lose a parent, that party on whom we rely for only everything? What did these people do when their families shrank? They cried their tears but then they did the vital thing. They built a new family, person by person. They came to see that family need not be defined merely as though with whom we share blood, but as those for whom we would give our blood"And Nicholas Nickleby and Guy Montag both rose from the ashes and surrounded themselves with a family.
