HBO’s ‘Fahrenheit 451’ Ending Explained (& How It Differs from the Book)

HBO’s new movie Fahrenheit 451 is an intense dystopian tale of a world where people actually want censorship. More and more people feel that books are portraying their minority group unfairly (and in this universe, everyone’s a minority.) As a result, more books are banned until, eventually, everything is banned. The government decides that reading books creates insanity, and firemen begin burning books wherever they find them. Books are illegal. All of this is fairly easy to understand, but it’s the ending that has left some fans confused. Read on to learn how the movie ends and how it differs from the book. This article will have spoilers for the movie and spoilers for the book. We will notify you near the end of the article, with bolded text, before the book spoilers are shown. 

At the end of Fahrenheit 451, Montag had decided to side with Clarisse and the rebels. He decided that books were worth saving, and the OMNIS DNA project was the best way to do it. OMNIS learned how to encode DNA with thousands upon thousands of books, in order to save humanity’s knowledge. That DNA was encoded in one bird, but they had scientists ready to encode the DNA into every species. Once the government found out, the Firemen knew they had to find and destroy OMNIS before an animal with the DNA got loose. The idea was that once it was free, it could reproduce and spread the DNA, and the DNA could never be stopped.

We also were treated to seeing people who had memorized books, but that part was mostly an aside, an homage to Ray Bradbury’s book, where memorization was the main method of maintaining human knowledge.

When Beatty, Montag’s mentor, discovered that Montag had betrayed him and sided with Clarisse, he had to get revenge. He had warned Montag that if he betrayed him, he would burn Montag in response. For a moment, it looked like Beatty might change his mind, however. He wrote and burned a note about how he betrays everyone, and it seemed like he might change his mind.

Instead, he planted books in Montag’s home and forced Montag to burn those books and his home itself. Montag’s popularity (as reflected in emoticon reactions a lot like Facebook) plummeted. He finally set fire to a fellow fireman just so he could escape. Interestingly, the “reactions” to that began to show lots of hearts when he aimed the flamethrower at the fireman, and they quickly turned to frowns as the fireman was burning alive.

Sadly, the firemen were able to track Montag. He led them straight back to the hideout where the boy who could memorize thousands of books lived (along with his DNA-encoded bird.) The firemen set everything on fire, and the movie ended with a standoff between Montag and Beatty. Montag put a tracker on the bird with the DNA, so the bird could fly away to safety and ultimately be found by scientists working on the rebel project. He set the bird free. Beatty could have killed the bird, but the conscience we’ve seen growing in him took over, and he didn’t.

But he still burned Montag alive. This part’s a little confusing. Did he do it to hide the truth of the bird escaping? Or did he feel that Montag still had to pay for betraying him, even though he wanted to let the knowledge encoded in the bird still survive? (It also feels like, in many ways, that Montag’s personal rebellion served little purpose. Since it appeared he led the Firemen to the hideout, it’s possible they would have survived and let the bird free themselves if Montag had never joined them.)

But what did that final scene with the birds mean?

In the final scene of the movie, we see the bird with the DNA joining a huge flock of birds. This is essentially letting us know that the bird is going to mate and its DNA is going to spread. The knowledge will never be lost. The bird also has a tracker, and scientists connected to the rebellion will likely find it and continue their quest to inject the DNA into more species. The ending, despite Montag’s dark and disturbing death, was hopeful.

But how does the ending compare to how the book ended? Read on for more details.  

The ending is very different from the book. OMNIS didn’t even exist in the book. A woman burning herself alive is still the moment that causes Montag to start challenging his beliefs. But things change from there. As you read above, in the movie Montag allowed Beatty to burn him alive during their standoff, after the bird was released.

In the book, Montag kills Beatty after he’s confronted with stashing books, and he’s able to escape to the rebels just as his city is being destroyed by bombs. He begins to remember passages from the Bible and starts to come to a type of enlightenment. He also realizes that fire can have constructive purposes too. And it does, as the oppressive civilization essentially destroys itself in flames, leaving room for new growth and hope.

Both the book and the movie ended with a feeling of hope for the future, but the movie’s ending was much bleaker.

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