A Letter from Montag
by Jordan Kocarek
Dear Citizens of 2016,
My name is Guy Montag and I am from the future. I would like to warn you about what life has become and how to avoid the sense of unhappiness in the future.
First of all, life in the future is very different from the life you are living right now. For example, we still have cars, but we drive faster than your average speeding car. We probably drive about a hundred MPH, sometimes more. This may not seem like a huge change from your present day, but it makes many other differences in life. Our billboards and roadside advertisements are so long and stretched out compared to what I've heard about your present day advertisements. We also don't get time to enjoy the scenery as we drive by.
This is an example of one of our shorter billboards
This brings me to another change in society, we don't get to relax, talk, or just enjoy the little things. Everyone is always doing something, driving, learning, talking to their film walls in the parlor. So many things have been eliminated just to keep our citizens from thinking and relaxing. Our society doesn't have rocking chairs, we don't have front porches. It's all trying to hurry the day up so we can get it over with. It's almost like they are hurrying to the end of life, not waiting to enjoy anything.
This is the closest thing we have to a front porch.
This was our first TV film wall. My wife wants all 4 walls like this
All seating is uncomfortable so we can't sit around to think or talk.
Okay so here's the scary part. I want to warn you not to be a coward. If you believe in something make it known. I know someone named Faber, I'm sure he would give anything to go back and say what he believed to change history. So many awful things can happen if we just let bad things happen. In my time, books are burned and so are the houses or structures that they are in but there are so many people who know they probably could've stopped it.
I was a "fireman" for a while. And I don't mean the ones that put out fires, I started them. Now I know that I probably seem crazy saying don't let them burn your books when that's my job but I only realized how wrong this is recently. I used to think burning brought happiness but now I realize that not only does it not bring anything to me, but it brings tragedy to others. I am on break and I'm determined to not go back after spraying a woman's house with kerosene and then because she refused to leave, burned to death. It's so scary and it is our fault completely.
I'm not proud at all but this was just daily. I burned perfunctorily and didn't think twice about it! But now I realize books can be such a great thing and I don't think I want to burn them anymore. I want to end this phase of burning books and homes. I'm done with this and I want to stress to you how you cannot let this happen to your future because even though most of us don't think twice about it, it bothers some of us A LOT!
I hope you will believe me and make better future choices.
Hopeful and Sincerely,