They say a handful of rest is worth two handfuls of work. That’s all well and good. However, there is a second consciousness I awoken to after teaching myself to read. A new found confidence, a sense of relation to the characters I read about, and a feeling of finally standing on solid ground. I always ‘wondered’ if escaping captivity was the ‘right’ thing to do.

I saw myself in Montag. With every word I learned and with every page I was crossing the middle passage in my mind. I felt what Montag felt after his meeting with Faber and after Faber put the “green bullet” in his ear and even after the green bullet was gone. In Fahrenheit 451(60th Edition) on pg. 99 the narrator explains the experience quite well,”Now he knew that he was two people…His mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag any more, this the old man told him, assured him, promised him.  He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then, one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence, there would be neither fire nor water, but wine.” Fine wine indeed. Not a drunken slumber. I grew a new pair of legs, with my mental freedom, I was an animal, like Montag. It was a compliment when Granger called Montag a “drunken elk” on pg. 141.