Anyone who took the time to notice how Beatty acted in the novel would realize how intellegent he is. If he thinks so much, then how could he possibly hate books when they are contained with so many thoughts. How can any person intelligent enough to understand why books are burnt want to burn them? I have a couple of theories, and it may be just one of them or both of them put together. It may not have been either of them.
The most reasonable theory I have is that Beatty wanted power over people by keeping them thoughtless. Controlling people may not be possible, because you cannot control their thoughts, but if they do not have thoughts they are just like cows waiting to be led around. Even though it's the most reasonable theory, I do have a problem with it. There is nowhere that he could lead people and nothing for him to lead them to do. My other problem with it is that what in the world would a suicidal person want with power? I do not understand it. Everything that happened with Beatty is very unexplainable.
There is also a possibility that Beatty is just not a nice man. When he talks about people, his tone of voice sounds like he's disgusted (Bradbury 61). I think he may like keeping people thoughtless because it makes him feel superior to them. Then, if he is a nasty as that sounds, he can at least feel like he is better than the thoughtless animals around him. This makes more sense to me, because if he can only feel good when the people around him are thoughtless, he must really be as suicidal as Montag suspected him to be.
In the end, I really just wonder why he could be suicidal. He could potentially hate himself for burning books. If so, he could only keep burning books to keep people less smart than him so at least he can feel good about that. If that is the case, then there is something seriously wrong with him. Maybe he is smart enough to know how wonderful books are, but he does not want to have his house burned down by his men. Obviously, his life is very conflicted, so he could lead a suicidal life because of that.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print.
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