Captain Beatty
Beatty is Montag’s fire chief and one of the book’s most intellectually complicated figures.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeBeatty is Montag’s fire chief and one of the book’s most intellectually complicated figures. He knows literature well enough to quote it aggressively, yet uses that knowledge to defend censorship and confuse anyone seeking stable meaning. He suspects Montag early, forces him to burn his own house, and threatens Faber. Montag kills him with the flamethrower. Montag later wonders whether Beatty deliberately provoked his own death.
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