Fahrenheit 451 #1

Novel Studies

Book Club

This is a book of warning. It is a reminder that what we have is valuable, and that sometimes we take what we value for granted.
There are three phrases that make possible the world of writing about the world of not-yet (you can call it science fiction or speculative fiction; you can call it anything you wish) and they are simple phrases:
What if . . . ?
If only . . .
If this goes on .

Note from the Ray Bradbury

-Jaun Ramon Jimenez

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way

Open Ended

What do you think Juan J. meant by "If they give you ruled paper, write the other way." ?

• 3RD Generation Fireman

• Loves the feeling of burning things

• 30 years old

• Protaganist

​

Guy Montag

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Open Ended

What do you think this means? “It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things blackened and changed.”

Multiple Choice

How does the protagonist feel as he sets the house on fire?

• He feels excited and pleasure in witnessing the destruction caused by the fire.

• He feels sad from watching the books burn

• He feels bored

• He feels nothing because he has become numb to his repetitive job

Multiple Choice

What imagery is used to describe the protagonist's actions?

• Imagery related to movement, emotions, or physical appearance
• Imagery related to a conductor orchestrating symphonies of blazing and burning

• Imagery related to historical events
• Imagery related to ruins of history

Multiple Choice

How do the books in the passage represent something beyond their literal meaning?

• The books symbolizes all the authors who lost their way in the world.

• The books represent the number of trees destroyed to make the pages on which authors wrote.

• The books symbolize knowledge, ideas, and individuality, all of which are suppressed and destroyed in the society depicted in the passage.

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

He hung up his black beetle-colored helmet and shined it; he hung his flameproof jacket neatly; he showered luxuriously, and then, whistling, hands in pockets, walked across the upper floor of the fire station and fell down the hole. At the last moment, when disaster seemed positive, he pulled his hands from his pockets and broke his fall by grasping the golden pole. He slid to a squeaking halt, the heels one inch from the concrete floor downstairs. He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth and let him out with a great puff of warm air onto the creamtiled escalator rising to the suburb.

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

Whistling, he let the escalator waft him into the still night air. He walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular. Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone had called his name. The last few nights he had had the most uncertain feelings about the sidewalk just around the corner here, moving in the starlight toward his house. He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone had been there. The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through. Perhaps his nose detected a faint perfume, perhaps the skin on the backs of his hands, on his face, felt the temperature rise at this one spot where a person’s standing might raise the immediate atmosphere ten degrees for an instant. There was no understanding it. Each time he made the turn, he saw only the white, unused, buckling sidewalk, with perhaps, on one night, something vanishing swiftly across a lawn before he could focus his eyes or speak.

Multiple Choice

How was Montag feeling as he was walking?

• Conflicted and contemplative
• Excited and joyful
• Anxious and fearful
• Indifferent and bored

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

But now tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting? He turned the corner.

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

But now tonight, he slowed almost to a stop. His inner mind, reaching out to turn the corner for him, had heard the faintest whisper. Breathing? Or was the atmosphere compressed merely by someone standing very quietly there, waiting? He turned the corner.

The Hearth and the Salamander

It was a pleasure to burn.

The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward. Her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves. Her face was slender and milk-white, and in it was a kind of gentle hunger that touched over everything with tireless curiosity. It was a look, almost, of pale surprise; the dark eyes were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them. Her dress was white and it whispered. He almost thought he heard the motion of her hands as she walked, and the infinitely small sound now, the white stir of her face turning when she discovered she was a moment away from a man who stood in the middle of the pavement waiting