Fahrenheit 451 pp. 154-End (165)

Hello.

I had a wonderful post that was beautifully written and well thought out, when I did something stupid and accidentally deleted an hour’s worth of work and a page an a half-long post. As a result, I will have to be briefer in this new version. I apologize for that.

The first thing that I have to say about the ending of Fahrenheit 451 is wow. I sit here at my computer, utterly pissed off at the vile thing, and can’t come up with anything witty or clever to say. All I can say is wow.

I had this idea in my head that there was no way that Bradbury could tie up the ending happily. Montag and his rag-tag group of men were going to spend the rest of their lives living on the train tracks, never having the opportunity to recite what they had so long stored away in their heads. Meanwhile, the civilization would kill each other and deaden their minds with “parlor games”. That leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

True, the city was bombed and, true, that’s sad, but is not nearly so sad as if Montag and the other men had never helped society had had spent their whole lives on the tracks.

It was a marvelous ending.

Montag and the other old men get a chance to recite what they had stored to someone who might, just might, listen, now that the country is at war.

I think this is part of what Montag was saying when he said that if anyone asked them what they were doing, he could say that they were remembering. They were remembering the books; they were remembering the way things used to be. But perhaps most important of all, they were remembering what happened to their civilization. They remembered so that one day, man wouldn’t have to be a phoenix, they wouldn’t have to burn and be reborn from the ashes. They wouldn’t have to burn at all.

I think that the phoenix analogy is truly great for two reasons. The first is that is perfectly illustrates the way Montag’s society operates. It burns, it’s reborn from the ashes, yes, but if people just remembered their mistakes, perhaps they wouldn’t have a catalyst as dramatic as complete destruction for any change to happen. The second reason that I think it is so powerful is because if follows the trend of burning that exists throughout the book. I think that it really connects to my last post in which I quoted the line about the sun and time burning.

I am sorry that this is not nearly as good as the original, but I do have a lot of homework and not the time to recreate with the beautiful language.

Goodbye.

Fahrenhiet 452 pp. 138-154

Hello.

I think that other than the sections of this book that contain Clarisse, this was my favorite part. One of the reasons I really like it is because the metaphors return and you lose the rushed feeling that Bradbury’s writing takes on while Montag is on the run. I really didn’t like the last section for this reason. It’s not just Montag and his emotions that become rushed, but the actual style of writing.

In this one I knew that he had returned to his old (and better) writing style from page 140, where Bradbury puts in this wonderful speech about burning. It goes like this, “He saw the moon low in the sky now. The moon there , and the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? It’s own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time burning. Burning….The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind….He knew why he must never burn again in his life.

“The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on it’s axis and time was busy burning the years and people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything was burnt.

“One of them had to stop burning. The sun wouldn’t, certainly. So it looked as though it had to be Montag and the people he’d worked with until a few short hours ago.”

I really love this quote because it seems as though Montag realizes something so important and so fundamental in one moment. Exactly like an epiphany. I also like this image of the sun burning Time (with a capital T, note). I just think that it is beautiful.

I think that part of this transformation in Montag is illustrated by the transfer from a cityscape to nature (as Mr. Janna said on his “blog”). As he is allowed to float along this river in a sort of “down time while on the run, he thinks about a farm he visited as a child and what it would be like to stay at a farm he passes. As the landscape becomes less…aggressive, in a way, so do Montag’s thoughts.

I’m not saying that Montag suddenly is remade by the shift from city to country, I’m just saying that as he changes, so does the landscape. I think that this is a tool that writers use all the time. I have noticed that in most books, rain and gloom accompany the characters bad moods, however, when they are having a picnic, or frolicking in the park, it’s all sun and happiness. Sometimes, you don’t even realize it.

The last interesting thing that I would like to bring up is how the old men reintroduce themselves after Montag has discovered that they carry books around in their heads. For example, the leader says that he is Plato’s “Republic”. I just thought that was interesting, did anyone else catch that?

So long my fair friends.
I shall add this as a sort of postscript. Mr. Janna left a very interesting comment on my “blog”, a copy of it follows, in response to my post saying that this book has all the answers. Here is what he said:

“If this book holds all the answers, then what are the questions? Does literature give us answers to questions? What does literature "do" anyway?

In response, this is what I have to say. Mr. Janna,

Do there have to be questions to be answers? Can you not simply find out more about the human race by reading?

I think that literature holds all the answers. No matter what your question, you can find it's answer in a book. I think that this is something that most people in this era have forgotten. Internet has a lot of the answers. If I need to know, quickly, who it was who used the silk road, or why boats float, I too will turn to the interent. But there are things that you simply cant find there. In no single medium is human nature convayed as well as in books.

So what are the questions? There are no questions. Only answers for those willing to seek them out.

Fahrenheit 451 pp. 125-137

Hello (I have run out of creative introductions and so will return to the old stand by).
I have to say that this is probably my least favorite section of the book so far. Not because nothing happens, a lot of stuff does, but because it’s not written in a very artful way, like the rest of the books is. In a way, this part is written very plainly. I have noticed that since the death of Clarisse, things don’t seems as beautiful, in terms of how things are written and the way the world is portrayed.
Of what was written in this section I think that my favorite part was when Montag was speaking to Mrs. Black in his thoughts on page 129. He says, “Mrs. Black, are you asleep in there?...This isn’t good, but your husband did it to others and never asked and never wondered and never worried. And now since you’re a fireman’s wife, it’s your house and your turn, for all those houses your husband burnt and all of the people he hurt without thinking…. Goodnight, Mrs. Black.”
This, I think, is very powerful. It really shows something. Montag was one of those people. The kind of fireman who burnt, loved it, and never thought about all of those people that he was hurting. He never asked, never wondered and never worried. And then his house was, much as the Black house is. So in a way, it is vengeance, but I don’t think that Montag stopped to think about how like his own life the whole scenario was.
The other reason I like this is because it is one of the only beautiful pieces in this section. The other one, I think, would have to be the line, “Wisps of laughter trailed back to him with the blue exhaust from the beetle.” This is a great image, as is the one later about him saying something very loudly in his head.
Other than these spots, I think that the writing is almost drab in this section. Having read slightly ahead, though, I know that it picks up again with a wonderful passage about burning on page 140. Until I can write something about that…
…Goodbye.

Fahrenhiet 452 pp. 110-125

Hi.
This section mainly involved the discovery that Mildred was indeed behind the report on Montag and the burning of his house. During the burning, Montag murders captain Beatty, “kills” the hound and threatens other members of the firehouse.
My favorite sentence from this part was the line, “There was a crash like the falling parts of a dream fashioned out of warped glass, mirrors and crystal prisms.” that was on page 114, second-to-last paragraph.
I like this image that is created here because you really get this feeling of broken dreams. I feel like I can almost hear the tinkling of broken crystals falling in a heap. I think that is one of the reasons that it is so wonderful. It also creates this image of a broken mirror where everything looks strange, though moments before, it had seemed so familiar, I know you know the feeling. And last, I like it because of the hopelessness that it carries. I can feel the despair as everything that he knew comes crashing down at his feet, I can feel the shards of his dreams, because the description is so good.
I am really sorry that this is so short, Mr. Janna (cough, cough, I hope you’re reading this) gave us far too much homework tonight.
Bye!

Fahrenhiet 452 pp. 91-100

Good day (see, I am thinking of new, creative greetings).
This was a really great, interesting section because Montag was so utterly betrayed by Mildred. She was so worried about her own appearance, that she called the firehouse on him. I was so surprised that anyone could be so uncaring and heartless. They were marries for a long time, they lived in the same house, and Montag obviously thought something of her, even if it wasn’t love. I was just so surprised.
The two most important scenes in this part of the novel, I think, are the scene in the parlor in which Montag reads the poem “Dover Beach” (which is a real poem by Mathew Arnold) and the scene in the Firehouse with Captain Beatty.
In the parlor, Montag gets so angry at the shows—the drivel—that his wife and her friends are watching that he reads them a part of “Dover Beach”, a poem from a book that he stole. He does it to show them how textureless their shows are with their screeching tires and screaming voices. This is important because I think that it is the main event that causes Mildred to turn him in. Mildred, more than her friends, seems to be shocked by this open show of disobedience to the law. She is more worried about how this act will reflect on her than she is about Montag getting caught.
I personally think that this scene is interesting (especially to my little decline of civilization theory) because Mildred leaves him so easily. She has friends that are on their third husband. She just doesn’t love him. I think that we are getting to a stage like that already. My parents are divorced and my father is remarried. I know that I am not the only one in that situation.
The second important scene, the one in the Firehouse, was after Montag goes back to work; turning in the book he stole (or a substitute) to captain Beatty. At first, the captain seems ready to let it go, but as they are playing cards, he brings up a dream he allegedly had. In it he was having an argument with Montag. Montag was spewing literature, and Beatty was quoting back.
This is important, I think, because it shows that Beatty actually knows a lot of literature. He knew the quote that the dying woman said, and he was able to fuel a whole dream filled with quotes. Obviously, he has read some of the books that he is burning.
I am really curious about what is going to happen next. I know that Montag’s house will be burned, but I’m not sure what he is going to do after that, now that he is out of a job, a home, and all of the books he stole. There are a lot of questions to be asked.
My favorite passage from this section, however, is the third-to-last paragraph on page 101, that starts with “‘Go home.’ Montag fixed his eyes on her…” It really emphasizes the unhappiness of the people in this reality and I think that is one of the most interesting themes in this book. Mrs. Bowles has this past, these three husbands and children that hate her, and so she immerses herself in these “parlor games”, but perhaps this is the cause of her unhappiness. “The salamander swallows it’s own tail,” Faber says. The beginning, the cause, circles around to meat the end, the effect and make on continuous circle until you don’t know what is the beginning, what is the cause, and what is the end, what is the effect.
Though this is a great metaphor, I think that my favorite is something Faber says on page 83 (it’s a little before our reading for tonight, I know, but is my favorite). He says, in paragraph two that if you were to put a book under the glass you would see life, teeming there across the pages in “infinite profusion”. I just think that is the most wonderful idea, partially because I believe that it is true. I said in my post on January the 21, that humans don’t like to look at their own ugliness. Books are so alive that it shows humans something they don’t want to see. I think that was the best metaphor, possibly in the whole book. In general, Faber has wonderful lines.
Good day (isn’t it cool how that can be used as a greeting and a dismissal?).

Fahrenheit 451 pp. 80-91

Greetings.
Unfortunately, I don’t have as much time to rant as I normally do (or perhaps that is fortunate) so I will have to get right to the questions asked of me.
Faber says that there are three things that books have that are lost on the modern world (in the book). I also believe that these are important to reading and one of the things that I don’t feel computers have, no matter how smart they get.
The first of these is “quality, the texture of information”, as Faber says. He believes, as I do, that books contain life. They actually have some real element to them—even fiction. The author has looked at humans, real humans, and put parts of their life into his or her book. Even if you don’t think you are, when you write something, or create a character, you are basing it off of someone in the real world. Where else would you have picked up those traits? How would you have known that when a shy girl is nervous, she looks down, or stutters? By meeting a real person that does those things.
The second thing that Faber says is missing from the “parlor family” is leisure. What’s in the “parlor” is “real”. There is some “real” type of interface; it’s like talking to a real person. You don’t have time to digest what they have told you. You just react. With a book, you can put it down, think about it, pace around the room, make your lists and then come back with a new understanding. If you don’t do this with reading, you probably aren’t comprehending as much as you could.
The third and last thing that Faber points out is that you have to have the ability to act on what you ascertain. You have to be able to take this thing you have learned, this little kernel of knowledge that you have gained, and put the understanding of that into motion. The government, and the people’s own apathy, keep them from this last thing.
So with all of these important things that people are loosing, is it any wonder that their society, and the minds of the people, are degrading?
Goodbye.

Listening, Waiting, Watching

Wind causes the palm trees to lash my window. I hear it like little fingers; they tap on the glass, “Hello.” They say. “Hello.” Bars of orange light filter through my blinds and shine like garish sunlight on my upturned face.
I listen.
“It’s coming,” the fingers say. “It’s coming.” And I wait. My ears strain for the telltale sounds, the lighter, smoother tapping. It’s like the children have gone away and moonlight herself is tapping at my window. But she’s not there yet.
From other rooms in my house, I hear nothing. I know that somewhere below, a talk show rambles. It’s the kind with the laugh track, I can hear it sometimes. But not tonight. All I hear tonight are the child-fingers.
And then, for a moment, the tap-tapping stops, like the sky has taken a breath, its run out of air. I know that when this mighty breath is expelled, it will bring with it something cooler. Something not unlike a symphony.
I wait.
Then I hear it. Just once. The soft, cool sound of water against glass. Another follows, I know, but for a moment the palm tapping has come back and I cant hear it. For a moment, I lay there, staring at the orange stripes on my ceiling. It’s late, I know, but I have to wait, it will be just a moment now, just a moment.
A second drop follows the first, a second of the sky’s perfect tears. Slowly I sit, pushing the heavy covers off my legs, relishing in the cold. It’s not at all biting, not at all like the rabid dogs poems make it out to be. Cold is made of something softer. Like dew on the roses I wish I had in my garden, or clouds in the night sky.
I open the window over my bed, it creaks, I know just when, but I open it all the way. Just a moment now, just a moment.
They start to fall through the screen, drop after drop, spattering my face. I wish I could taste them, whish I could catch each one of them, but they fall, turning the sidewalk grey and my blankets spotted with dark drops.
It seems like such a waste that I’m the only one who’s documenting their short lives. That I am the only person to watch the rain.

Fahrenheit 451 pp. 68-80

Hello (doesn’t that familiar greeting get boring?).
Laura Mitchell asked me if I thought this book holds all the answers. She asked it in jest, but I really think that it does. It asks a lot of fundamental questions about happiness and what we need to be happy. It also shows that you can talk for hours—your whole life—and never say a thing, because if you never say anything of value, then you have, in effect, said nothing. I am a lover of books. I just am. I think that this isn’t something that I was born with, but my mother is a bibliophile, I was taught to love books and I really love THIS book, because, though it is about burning books, which sounds contradictory, it’s really about the importance of books and what they hold. This is something that I firmly believe.
One of the things that saddens me the most is people who defile books. I know that there is at least one book in Mr. Janna’s classroom that has been written in. Today I brought a book to school and someone thought that it would be fine with me to write on it. I can't even express how angry that made me. People write in library books, they throw them off of buildings, and think nothing of turning down the corners. Call me a traditional, old lady, but I think that we are on the path to burning books. We have already lost all respect for them.
I have nothing more to say on the topic that I haven’t already said and I don’t want to bore anyone.

I would like to discuss the sieve analogy that can be found on page 78, paragraph three. I found this comparison interesting for several reasons.
The first of these is because of what I take it to mean. They way I see it, Montag is comparing his experience with the sieve at the beach to the idea that if he read the bible fast enough that not all of the words would drain out of the sieve of his mind and he could hold them there long enough to comprehend them. First, I really like the description of his experience with the sieve. Especially the part where he is talking about how he did it for a dime, the sound the sand made and how hot it was. But the other thing I like about this sense of urgency and the knowledge that no matter how fast you fill a sieve, it will always leak out.
The second reason I like this is because of the way that the symbol is, in a way, symbolic of something else. I think that it is also describing what his society is like. Everyone is rushing round, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying, but no matter what they do, all of the sand drains out of the sieve and they are left with nothing.
Goodbye (another of those tiresome, old endings).

Fahrenhiet 452 pp. 40-68

Hello.
A man by the name of Allan Bloom once wrote a book called “The Closing of the American Mind”. In it he describes, at one point, his own reading habits, saying that a good book causes you to pace around the room, make lists and reference other books, pulling them off the bookshelf and searching fervidly for passages. It was a very active sense of reading, and I wish that I could find the passage, but not having read the book myself, it think it is lost until I pick it up. My point in all of this is that books, good ones, at least, make you think. This is a really good book and I have thought for a long time about it.
A few things happened in this part of the book that I would like to draw attention to, slightly taking on my role, as Austin Cook said, of explaining the book “for dummies”. I personally think that none of you are dummies, but everyone gets confused (me too) and so I thought I would just recap before answering the questions.
Montag goes to a woman’s house and burns her and her books. In the process, however, he steals one and hides it in his own house. One of the interesting things that Daniel brought more sharply to my attention was what the woman said when they first were trying to burn her house. She said, “Play the man, Master Ridley. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust it shall never be put out.” She says this, as Beatty explains, because of two men who were burnt at the stake for hearsay (second hand information) and she is being burnt for owning books, which is a type of hearsay, I suppose. I think of books more as part of the quest for knowledge (and a wonderful form of entertainment, though putting them in that category seems almost criminal), which might have been what the man, “Master Ridley”, was burnt for as well.
Beatty explains a bit how books went out of fashion. He tells Montag that it was not the government, but the people, who grew upset with books, especially referring to minorities. The minorities didn’t like the books about minorities, especially Beatty references “Little Black Sambo”.
Also, he says, books made people unhappy because they made them think. Let me say right now that if you are not appalled by the state of things in the world today, you haven’t been thinking, but some people would rather be ignorant and happy. Books made people think, and they didn’t want to have to look at their own ugliness, the ugliness of the human race. The solution? Stop reading; start burning the books you don’t like. Well, lets say I don’t like this book, you don’t like that one and someone dislikes a third. What’s left? Nothing.
Beatty calls Montag and the other firemen the “Happiness Boys”. He says this because he believes that he is preserving people’s happiness. By keeping books out of people’s hands, he is keeping them from thinking about things that would, he believes, eventually make them unhappy.
But I have this question to pose: was the woman with her books, who was burned with her books, unhappy?
Here is my answer, though I am sure you’ll have different ones. No. She wasn’t unhappy. She was enlightened. In a way, her burning was a silent protest, I think. She knew what was happening to the world, she had broken through the illusion, in a “Matrix”-like escape. In “The Matrix” everyone is part of this computer program, and when Neo, the protagonist, finds this out, he doesn’t want to—or perhaps can’t—go back to living in a web of lies. I see the woman like that. She has seen everything from the outside and couldn’t allow herself to go into custody where she would have to submit herself to that lie again. That’s how I see it.
Now I would like to ask another question. Does this book make you think? Does it make you unhappy? It should. I am speaking to the people out there who have never picked up a book of their own free will. It should be making you think, it should be making you pace around the room and make lists.
It’s a good book.
Goodbye.

My Fear, My Dread

A shock, cool and electric, starting in my head like an earthquake that runs through my whole body, causing only the slightest of shivers to be outwardly visible. A fear. It seeps under the doors of my mind like a noxious gas, slowly paralyzing my senses. I have to close my eyes, just for a moment, to let the tremors pass, to let my breathing return to normal, to loosen the constriction in my chest. Weights descend on my shoulders and chest, despite the fact that I am vertical. A feeling like rising bile restricts my breathing and coils in my abdomen like a viper on a sun-warmed rock, though my stomach feels anything but warm. It’s my worst fear, fear itself and it’s a physical pain in my body, coursing through my blood.

Fahrenheit 451 pp. 21-40

Hello.
At his point, I can’t believe—won’t believe—that there is a single person reading this book who doesn’t like it. I am so drawn into the story. Perhaps it is just because I am a bibliophile, but I love this book. The descriptions are so wonderful.
Again, I don’t think that I am confused about anything in the book, though this section is far more complicated than the last. Sometimes you have to read things twice to understand what Bradbury is trying to convey, but I don’t find myself getting horribly confused over the actual plot of the story.
There are two questions posed to me, but I cant choose between them, one being a personal hobbyhorse and the other something that I have a lot to say on (though I seem to have something to say about everything, as anyone in class will tell you). The first of these questions is why does Clarisse, an almost-seventeen year old, seem so much more mature than Mildred a thirty year-old? Why does Bradbury compare the two?
The second is do you think that people in the book and people today are the same or different? Why?
I will answer the first one first, as I have a tendency to rant a bit when set on the second topic.
I believe that Clarisse seems so much older than Mildred because she is thinking about real issues. Clarisse is concerned with what is happening to the youth of this country, she takes time with her life, spots to smell the roses, as the saying goes. Generally she is a very inquisitive person who refuses to be force-fed the history the government offers. She thinks about the “old” firemen, ones who actually put out fires and dreams of a time when books were not illegal.
Mildred on the other hand is rather self-centered. She seems to be concerned most with this play she has sent her box tops in for. She wants the fourth wall of her surround TV to be put in, claiming that Montag is selfish and never thinks of her when he tells her that the TV walls are expensive. And—possibly most importantly—she is perfectly fine with the information that is being fed to her. She doesn’t question anything. She likes her TVs and her Earshells. She never stops to taste the rain or smell the flowers. She is fine with her own little virtual reality. On the other hand, she has this deeper part of her character that takes sleeping pills to commit suicide and is, perhaps, unsatisfied with the way her life is going, though we have no real way of knowing.
I believe that author makes the contrast because he is showing that it is not experience that makes us wise, but just knowledge of the world. Mildred has never tried to find anything deeper in her life because she is happy with her TVs, Clarisse is born inquisitive—a desire for knowledge that is fed by her mysterious uncle—and wants something more. Perhaps that he also wants to show that not all children fit the stereotypical mold that some seem so apt to put them in.
Now on to the second question. Yes. I firmly believe that this is a future we are heading to and Ray Bradbury was farseeing to predict a future like this in 1950. Today, anywhere you go you can find someone on a computer or a cell phone. Children in second grade worry about having the latest technology. People spend more and more time in their own little worlds, drawing their own likes closer to them while pushing away real humans and books, which can teach us so much. We are going to loose wisdom if we stop reading. Not everything can be found on the internet, sometimes you have to look a little farther than your computer screen to find something, and when you are not looking for anything at all, what you need is not your Playstation, but a book, where you can learn something other than how to kill the next enemy that pops up. I have been told I am smart, whether I am or not isn’t relevant, but everything that I learned, every piece of information I have collected has come from a book. The newest generation doesn’t read anything, they have no idea what they are loosing.
Goodbye.

Fahrenheit 451 pp. 3-21

Hello.
I would like to start, though it is not required, by saying that I love this book. I had never read it before, but I find it absolutely amazing!
I am not really confused by anything in the book, though I see how one could be. The metaphors in the book are so rich, sometimes, by time you reach the end of them, you forget what the author was talking about. For example, I had to read the comparison of Clarisse’s face to a clock face twice, because the first time, I got to the end, and found that I had forgotten what he was comparing his intricate clock description to.
I have to say that I knew almost from the first moment that Guy Montag and his wife, Mildred were not on close terms from the moment she first entered on the scene, perhaps before. First, as he is walking home from a whole night out starting fires, he doesn’t think about his wife at all. Then, he gets home and the house is silent, he doesn’t call for his wife, he just looks at the vent in the ceiling where he seems to be hiding something (I’ll come back to that). The next clue was as he walked into the bedroom. He hears Mildred’s earphones and immediately frowns, “He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on it’s self like a tallow skin…(pg 12)” so obviously his wife’s preoccupation with her earphones, her “electrical…hidden wasp (pg 12)”, is not something that he is fond of. He says himself, before he finds the medicine bottle that he is actually unhappy, though he had been trying to convince himself that he was.
And then, of course, there is the conversation he has with Mildred. If nothing else proves their unhappiness, it is this. They way she talks to him and the way he feels while talking to her shows that there is obviously something wrong.
Now, as I promised, I have a theory about that air vent that I mentioned earlier. And before I take full credit for this, I would like to say that in the front of my book (and mine is a different copy) there is a small passage of the book that I read first and it is very revealing. I won’t say what it says here, because anyone can read this, but my theory is that he is hiding stolen books behind the vent in the ceiling. Along with the beginning passage in my book, he also responded to Clarisse’s question about whether he read the books in a very suspicious manner. So there is my theory.
Goodbye.

First Post (it's the end of the world as we know it)

I would like to (not so) happily announce that this is my first ever post on any variety of blog or blogging site. I can’t say that I am happy about it. I have avoided all blogs like the plague, more or less hating all technology. As I write this (in Microsoft Word) I would also like to inform all of you that “blog” is not a word. This truly is the decline of civilization, along with the loss of children/teen literature and the way chat speak has wormed it’s way into American’s speech. Loss of formal education is going to follow soon, I know it. Has any one out there read feed? Anyone? Read it, that’s my advice. Our world is going to be like that. If you think that’s good, that I don’t want to associate with you any more.
Have a cheery day.