Literature Analysis #6

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury

To be honest, I read at a very slow pace. I started this book early, but then things started to become overwhelming. This weekend was a wake up call for me, and I just needed to pace myself before I work myself too hard. 

I remembered that Dr. Preston used this book in his lectures to give a concrete comparison. This book brings the realization and understanding of what life may be like in our distant future. We will realize that what's happening in this book may happen in the future, but it would be to an extent. I don't feel that we will be burning books, but I just know that we will veer away from physical, hard copy books and utilize technology that can hold millions and millions of books. A quote from the cover page of the book, "Fahrenheit 451...The Temperature At Which Books Burn" states, to an extent, of what may happen with hard copy books in the future. They probably won't be burned, but they probably will be not as frequently as they are now. I know many people are reading books through their computers, their tablets, their phones, practically with any electronic device, you can read a book and read more books.

In Dr. Preston's lectures, I remember him talking about how we can make a comparison between Fahrenheit 451  and Brave New World. Both books have societies where they consider books to be evil and a bad influence. Books provide the gateway to thinking, understanding, and realizing. They also provide or influence independence and consideration. In Fahrenheit 451, books were considered to be unorthodox and had ill-intentions. In Brave New World, books were considered in the same way as in Fahrenheit 451.

It's weird to think that books were considered to be evil and wrong. The whole world is based on a book or books that help shape society and who we are today. It is true though because books do actually open up a gateway to thinking, independence, imagination, and dreaming which allows us to shape who we truly want to be.

1. Briefly summarize the plot of the novel you read according to the elements of plot you've learned in past courses (exposition, inciting incident, etc.).  Explain how the narrative fulfills the author's purpose (based on your well-informed interpretation of same).
2. Succinctly describe the theme of the novel. Avoid cliches.
3. Describe the author's tone. Include a minimum of three excerpts that illustrate your point(s).
4. Describe a minimum of ten literary elements/techniques you observed that strengthened your understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or your sense of the tone. For each, please include textual support to help illustrate the point for your readers. (Please include edition and page numbers for easy reference.)

CHARACTERIZATION
1. Describe two examples of direct characterization and two examples of indirect characterization.  Why does the author use both approaches, and to what end (i.e., what is your lasting impression of the character as a result)?
2. Does the author's syntax and/or diction change when s/he focuses on character?  How?  Example(s)?
3. Is the protagonist static or dynamic?  Flat or round?  Explain.
4. After reading the book did you come away feeling like you'd met a person or read a character?  Analyze one textual example that illustrates your reaction.

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury opens up with a description of Guy Montag who is the main character of the story. He is caught with his own thinking and with society's thinking. He also is caught between two different types of perspectives. One of the two perspectives would be that books are evil and wrong. The other perspective would be that books have shaped humanity ever since the first book was written. Guy Montag is a fireman, but is not the fireman as we all know today. Montag was a fireman who started fires, not ended them. His job was to burn books and even houses that were may have been "affected" by books.
2. The theme of the novel is that we never truly realize how influential books are until we fully analyze how they play a role in our lives.
3. The author's tone seemed to be contemptuous because the books is about society and the disconnection between books and society.

• "'Police Alert. Wanted: Fugitive in city. Has committed murder and crimes against the State. Name: Guy Montag. Occupation: Fireman. Last seen...'" P. 124 
•  "He hid the books in the kitchen and moved from the house again to the alley and looked back and the house was still dark and quiet, sleeping." P. 130
•  "How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as a animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood hat would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long long time, listening to the warm crackle of the flames." P. 146

4.

• symbolism
• The books are huge symbols in the story. They symbolize terror and destruction. They also symbolize hope and thoughts.
• stereotype
• The stereotype in this book is that the fireman are called to start fires.
• "'How long've you worked at being a fireman?' 'Since I was twenty, ten years ago.' 'Do you ever read any of the books you burn?' He laughed. 'That's against the law!' 'Oh. Of course.' 'It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.'" P. 8
• setting
• With knowing the setting, the readers are able to feel and imagine their surroundings, especially in the scene where Montag and his wife are reading, despite of the illegality of reading books.
• "They read the long afternoon through, while the cold November rain fell from the sky upon the quiet house. They sat in the hall because the parlor was so empty and gray-looking without its wall lit with orange and yellow confetti and skyrockets and women in gold-mesh dresses and men in black velvet pulling one-hundred-pound rabbits from silver hats. The parlor was dead and Mildred kept peering in at it with a blank expression as Montag paced the floor and came back and squatted down and read a page as many as ten times, aloud." P.71
• omniscient point of view
• With an omniscient point of view, the readers are able to get a well-rounded description of each event.
• "Montag did not look back at his wife as he went trembling along the hall to the kitchen, where he stood a long time watching the rain hit the windows before he came back down the hall in the gray light, waiting for the tremble to outside." P.72
• narrator- The narrator plays an important role in the book as he/she describes ever single detail and dialogue to make the book as a whole.
• "This was not believed. It was merely a gesture. Montag saw thew flirt of a great metal fist over the far city and he knew the scream of the jets that would follow, would say, after the deed, disintegrate, leave no stone on another, perish. Die." P.158
• foil- Clarisse McClellan is the foil to Guy Montag at the first part of the book because she talks about how books were actually used to read in the past, and that Montag doesn't have to follow the culture/society to burn books even though he is a fireman who burns books. P.7-8
• imagery-
• The use of imagery allows the reader to picture an event/situation or even a character in the book, such as the Mechanical Hound which is a robot who assists the fireman and searches for those who may have books.
• "The Mechanical Hound was gone. Its kennel was empty and the firehouse stood all about in plaster silence and the orange Salamander slept with its kerosene in its belly and the fire throwers crossed upon its flanks and Montag came in through the silence and touched the brass pole and slid up in the dark air, looking back at the deserted kennel, his heart beating, pausing, beating. Faber was a gray moth asleep in his ear, for the moment." P.104
• foreshadowing
• Although, the front cover gives some foreshadowing, but the first page of the book, P.3 gives some foreshadowing of what things were to happen. There will be change.
• "It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." P.3
• argument
• The argument in the book is about who you are and how you would like to be, despite the influence of the culture.
• Montag was first a fireman, now a rebel. He chose how he would like to be, even though society tells him to be different.
• "Granger stood looking back with Montag.'Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. SOmething your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. '" P.157
• protagonist
• Montag is the protagonist because he goes against the slanted society. He went against the society that got rid of anything being influenced by the books and the thinking influenced by the books. He kills his boss, Beatty, which is his way of getting away from the society that he was once apart of.
• "And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling a frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent." P.119

1. The author uses both approaches to create a full description of who the character is, what he is like, and what is his purpose.

• Examples of Direct Characterization  
• "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 read and yellow and black." P.3
• This characterizes who and what Montag is.
• "Mildred's hand had frozen behind the pillow. Her fingers were tracing the book's outline and as the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned. Her mouth opened to ask a question..." P.56
• This directly characterizes who Mildred is and what she is going through.
• Examples of Indirect Characterization
•  '"I feel alive for the first time in years,' said Faber. 'I feel I'm doing what I should've done a life time ago. For a little while I 'm not afraid. Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last. Maybe it's because I've done a rash thing and don't want to look the coward to you. I suppose I'll have to do even more violent things, exposing myself so I won't fall down on the job and turn scared again.'" P.131 
• This indirectly characterizes who Faber is becoming through dialogue.
• '" I'm not thinking. I'm just doing like I'm told, like always. You said get the money and I got it. It didn't really think of it myself. When do I start working things out on my own?'" P. 92 
• This indirectly characterizes who Montag is at this point of the book.

2. The author's syntax and diction does not change when he focuses on character. He keeps a constant choice of words and sentence structure.

• An example is "God, what a pulse! I've got you going, have I, Montag? Jesus God, your pulse sounds like the day after the war. Everything but sirens and bells! Shall I talk some more? I like your look of panic. Swahili, Indian, English Lit., I speak them all. A kind of excellent dumb discourse, Willie!"

3. The protagonist is a dynamic character because he changes or evolves through out the book. He starts off as one who burns books and gets rid of them, but towards the ending of the book, he becomes one who keeps the books and seeks others to share the experience that he is having with a book, that is deemed illegal and immoral.

4. After reading the book, I feel as if I have met a person because real people evolve in their minds and in their hearts when they experience something that is either "life-changing" or "mind-boggling".

•  An example would be "'There's Beatty [Montag's boss] dead, and he was my friend once, and there's Millie gone, I thought she was my wife, but now I don't know. And the house all burnt. And my job gone and myself on the run...'" P. 131 This passage creates an understanding of what is going on in Montag's life and how has he become different from his past.