1) At the end of the novel, Granger tells Montag that they all need to remember not to feel superior; that it is the books, not the people who read them, which are important. Earlier in the novel, Faber claimed that books themselves didn't matter, only that life was reflected in them. Are these contradictory or complementary statements?
I think that these statements complement eachother, because they are both basically saying the same thing. They both are saying that the books themselves don't matter, it's what you take from the books, and/or what you get out of them that matters.
2) If books and TV both have the capacity to convey information at a mass scale, then why are books so superior to telelvision in this novel?
I think that books are superior to TV in this novel, because Bradbury purposely made it seem that television was mindless. In a way it is. This question goes along with the one we discussed in class about why does society like violence. Most stuff on TV is mindless chaos, and only once in while you find a good show or movie that is meaningful and has a good moral meaning. Books on the otherhand, are a lot more meaningful. You can learn a lot more by reading a book and learning aomething new (even if it's as simple as learning what a word means) instead of, watching TV and seeing mindless stuff.
3) "What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a gerat welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives."
I think what this quote means is that there are a variety of books out there written by a variety of opinionated people. So the more books you read, the more different kinds of messages and opinions you are going to recieve One book may influence you one way, and another book can influence you the opposite way. It can be frustrating getting mixed messages. Eventually, you are just confused with a bunch of wordy advice in you head.
Technology and Modernization
"He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside, revealing a television sreen the size of a postal card. 'I always wanted something very small, something I could talk to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout me down, nothing monstrous big."
Analysis: This is Faber speaking to Montag and showing him his hand sized tv. Faber is scared that he will become like the rest of the society an become addicted to tv which is why he keeps a small tv that he can easily cover up and out of sight. Ray Bradbury is trying to emphasize in this quote how much tv has taken over the society and how close tv is to making books as well as reading extinct.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Rules and Order
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Wisdom and Knowledge
Montag walked to the kithen and threw the book down. "Montag", he said, "you're really stupid. Where do we go from here? Do we turn the books in, forget it?" He opened the book to read over Mildred's laughter. Poor Millie, he thought. Poor Montag, it's mud to you, too. But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late?
He is debating with himself. He doesn't know what to with the books. He thinks his wife is either sick mentally or she is laughing at him.
"I dont's want to chaqnve sides and just be told what to do. There's no reason to change if I do that."
"You're wise already!"
Basically, he doesn't want to be told what to do. He thinks he shouldn't change. If he did switch sides that is. He just answered his question by saying what he wants.
"Only a week ago, pumping a kerosene hose, I thought: God, what fun!"
The old man nodded. "Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents."
"So that's what I am."
"There's some of it in all of us."
In basic terms he's saying were all juvenile delinquents. There's some of that characteristic in all of us. They all have fun over thigs normal people wouldn't.
Violence
A minute later, Three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off each other's limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter. Two minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air.
"Millie, did you see that?"
"I saw it, I saw it!"
Millie is a sick person. She finds violence and people in aggonizing pain hilarious. Which clearly from my perspective someone who is a complere psyco woul find that funny.
The fire was gone, thenm back again, like a winking eye. He stopped, afraid he might blow the fire out with a single breath. But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off, It took the better part of fifteen minutes before he drew very close indeed to it, and then he stoodlooking at it from cover. That small motion, the white and red colour, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him.
He felt the difference within the burning of the books in comparison to a normal fire. He actually could feel the warmth and the literature and knowledge burning. Place quotations and analyses here.
Identity
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Dissatisfaction
"I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I've been saving up a lot of things, and don't know what. I might even start reading books. [...] Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to [Beatty]? He knows all the answers. He's right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I'm not happy, I'm not happy."
"I am." Mildred's mouth beamed. "And proud of it."
Analysis:
This quote is really showing a difference between Mildred and Montag. It is showing that Mildred is happy and Montag is not. I think at this point Clarisse helped Montag realized that he wasn't happy. Before, I think that he thought he was, but now he knows he's not. Yet, Mildred is happy because she doesn't know what is going on in society. Most people don't. Montag didn't even know and still kind of doesn't.
Montag is not happy because he found out he doesn't like burning books. He didn't mind it before, but when they burned that womans house I think it made him realize that there really is something in books. He know's that there is something about books that people don't know. He doesn't even know what it is, but he wants to know. He is getting curious.
Man and the Natural World
"I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."
"I don't think I'd like that."
"You might if you tried."
"I never have."
She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good."
Analysis:
Bradbury is trying to show how Clarisse represents nature in the book. She is the odd one out because of her curiosity and her strong dislike of violence and TV. Her willingness in this quote to try things out of the ordinary and to tell someone else to try it too.
"What is there about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?' Beatty blew out the flame and lit it agian. 'It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientist give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beautiful is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practcal."
Analysis:
Fire is a natural thing that was meant to sustain life but in Fahrenheit 451 fire is used most for destructive purposes. At the end of the quote Beatty states that Montag is a burden and that fire will get ride of the burden. This could be foreshadowing that Montag's house is going to burn with his books and implies that Beatty knows about Montag keeping books hidden.
Significant Quotations
Literature and Writing
1) At the end of the novel, Granger tells Montag that they all need to remember not to feel superior; that it is the books, not the people who read them, which are important. Earlier in the novel, Faber claimed that books themselves didn't matter, only that life was reflected in them. Are these contradictory or complementary statements?
I think that these statements complement eachother, because they are both basically saying the same thing. They both are saying that the books themselves don't matter, it's what you take from the books, and/or what you get out of them that matters.
2) If books and TV both have the capacity to convey information at a mass scale, then why are books so superior to telelvision in this novel?
I think that books are superior to TV in this novel, because Bradbury purposely made it seem that television was mindless. In a way it is. This question goes along with the one we discussed in class about why does society like violence. Most stuff on TV is mindless chaos, and only once in while you find a good show or movie that is meaningful and has a good moral meaning. Books on the otherhand, are a lot more meaningful. You can learn a lot more by reading a book and learning aomething new (even if it's as simple as learning what a word means) instead of, watching TV and seeing mindless stuff.
3) "What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a gerat welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives."
I think what this quote means is that there are a variety of books out there written by a variety of opinionated people. So the more books you read, the more different kinds of messages and opinions you are going to recieve One book may influence you one way, and another book can influence you the opposite way. It can be frustrating getting mixed messages. Eventually, you are just confused with a bunch of wordy advice in you head.
Technology and Modernization
"He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside, revealing a television sreen the size of a postal card. 'I always wanted something very small, something I could talk to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout me down, nothing monstrous big."
Analysis:
This is Faber speaking to Montag and showing him his hand sized tv. Faber is scared that he will become like the rest of the society an become addicted to tv which is why he keeps a small tv that he can easily cover up and out of sight. Ray Bradbury is trying to emphasize in this quote how much tv has taken over the society and how close tv is to making books as well as reading extinct.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Rules and Order
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Wisdom and Knowledge
Montag walked to the kithen and threw the book down. "Montag", he said, "you're really stupid. Where do we go from here? Do we turn the books in, forget it?" He opened the book to read over Mildred's laughter. Poor Millie, he thought. Poor Montag, it's mud to you, too. But where do you get help, where do you find a teacher this late?He is debating with himself. He doesn't know what to with the books. He thinks his wife is either sick mentally or she is laughing at him.
"I dont's want to chaqnve sides and just be told what to do. There's no reason to change if I do that."
"You're wise already!"
Basically, he doesn't want to be told what to do. He thinks he shouldn't change. If he did switch sides that is. He just answered his question by saying what he wants.
"Only a week ago, pumping a kerosene hose, I thought: God, what fun!"
The old man nodded. "Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents."
"So that's what I am."
"There's some of it in all of us."
In basic terms he's saying were all juvenile delinquents. There's some of that characteristic in all of us. They all have fun over thigs normal people wouldn't.
Violence
A minute later, Three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off each other's limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter. Two minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air.
"Millie, did you see that?"
"I saw it, I saw it!"
Millie is a sick person. She finds violence and people in aggonizing pain hilarious. Which clearly from my perspective someone who is a complere psyco woul find that funny.
The fire was gone, thenm back again, like a winking eye. He stopped, afraid he might blow the fire out with a single breath. But the fire was there and he approached warily, from a long way off, It took the better part of fifteen minutes before he drew very close indeed to it, and then he stoodlooking at it from cover. That small motion, the white and red colour, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him.
He felt the difference within the burning of the books in comparison to a normal fire. He actually could feel the warmth and the literature and knowledge burning.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Identity
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Place quotations and analyses here.
Dissatisfaction
"I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I've been saving up a lot of things, and don't know what. I might even start reading books. [...] Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to [Beatty]? He knows all the answers. He's right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, I'm not happy, I'm not happy."
"I am." Mildred's mouth beamed. "And proud of it."
Analysis:
This quote is really showing a difference between Mildred and Montag. It is showing that Mildred is happy and Montag is not. I think at this point Clarisse helped Montag realized that he wasn't happy. Before, I think that he thought he was, but now he knows he's not. Yet, Mildred is happy because she doesn't know what is going on in society. Most people don't. Montag didn't even know and still kind of doesn't.
Montag is not happy because he found out he doesn't like burning books. He didn't mind it before, but when they burned that womans house I think it made him realize that there really is something in books. He know's that there is something about books that people don't know. He doesn't even know what it is, but he wants to know. He is getting curious.
Man and the Natural World
"I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it."
"I don't think I'd like that."
"You might if you tried."
"I never have."
She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good."
Analysis:
Bradbury is trying to show how Clarisse represents nature in the book. She is the odd one out because of her curiosity and her strong dislike of violence and TV. Her willingness in this quote to try things out of the ordinary and to tell someone else to try it too.
"What is there about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?' Beatty blew out the flame and lit it agian. 'It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientist give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beautiful is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practcal."
Analysis:
Fire is a natural thing that was meant to sustain life but in Fahrenheit 451 fire is used most for destructive purposes. At the end of the quote Beatty states that Montag is a burden and that fire will get ride of the burden. This could be foreshadowing that Montag's house is going to burn with his books and implies that Beatty knows about Montag keeping books hidden.
Place quotations and analyses here.