Ambition is a strong desire to achieve something such as power, money, and/or glory. It can be a desire for anything, really. It is also the driving power or motivation to go after what is wanted most. Examples of ambition in Fahrenheit 451 can be seen mostly in Montag as he continually and restlessly seeks for understanding what books offer humanity, as he plans to overthrow some of the firemen, and as he saves his own life.
First, as Montag decides...
Ambition is a strong desire to achieve something such as power, money, and/or glory. It can be a desire for anything, really. It is also the driving power or motivation to go after what is wanted most. Examples of ambition in Fahrenheit 451 can be seen mostly in Montag as he continually and restlessly seeks for understanding what books offer humanity, as he plans to overthrow some of the firemen, and as he saves his own life.
First, as Montag decides to discover what is missing in life through books, he doesn't go back. He steals and hides books, Beatty implicitly threatens him, and his wife doesn't support him, but he keeps seeking the answers he desires. In fact, Montag shows ambition by seeking out Faber, the former English professor, for help. He and Faber soon come up with a plan to secretly protest the laws against literacy by planting books in firemen's houses. They figure that if some more firemen are made examples of, that people would start to wonder more about books and possibly end the laws against them.
Unfortunately, he gets reported by his wife and forced to burn his own house down. This doesn't stop Montag, though because he continues to fight for his life and his belief in books. He eventually kills Beatty, so he knows the authorities will be coming after him. Before he gets out of town, though, Montag still goes through with the plan to plant a few books in firemen's houses. He is finally chased by a Mechanical Hound, which is programmed to kill him. He saves himself by first dressing in Faber's clothes to throw off the scent, and then taking the river out of town.
Montag finds a group of people who have memorized books and whose ambition is to keep those books safe in their heads until a more literate society exists. Granger indirectly defines the difference between living with ambition and not by what his grandfather told him in the following passage:
"'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away'" (157).
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