Montag gazes at Clarisse’s empty house, and Beatty, guessing that he has fallen under her influence, berates him for it. Mildred rushes out of the house with a suitcase and is driven away in a taxi, and Montag realizes she must have called in the alarm. Beatty orders Montag to burn the house by himself with his flamethrower and warns that the Hound is on the watch for him if he tries to escape. Montag burns everything, and when he is finished, Beatty places him under arrest.Beatty sees that Montag is listening to something and strikes him on the head. The radio falls out of Montag’s ear, and Beatty picks it up, saying that he will have it traced to find the person on the other end. After Beatty eggs him on with more literary quotations, his last a quote from Julius Caesar, Montag turns his flamethrower on Beatty and burns him to a crisp. The other firemen do not move, and he knocks them out. The Mechanical Hound appears and injects Montag’s leg with anesthetic before he manages to destroy it with his flamethrower. Montag stumbles away on his numb leg.
Why it is important: These pages are important, because in a way, you lose the antagonist. Beatty stood for everything that was wrong with society, and he died as he lived: burning. Also, the Hound, which plagued him for so long, also died. In a way, everything that was holding him back - his job, his wife, his house - are gone. As Beatty said: 'fire destroys responsibility and consequences'. What an irony it burned him away, too.
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