"The Hearth and the Salamander" VOCAB Stolid – not easily stirred mentally. Unemotional. Dystopia – a state that focuses on oppression, terror or deprivation Minstrel – a lyric poet. (medieval times) Proclivities (33) - a natural inclination, tendency; propensity
QUOTES It was a pleasure to burn (3).
Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy.... He wore his happiness like a mask (12).
He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow (14) – Foreshadowing
liquid melancholy (16)
There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone (16).
“This is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow. Wad. Flush.” (17) Connotation of disposable - throwaway, not reusable.
I don't know anything anymore (18).
“Strangers come and violate you.” (So do firemen) This statement is foreshadowing Bradbury’s purpose.
He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other (24).
THE HOUND It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think. ‘That’s sad,’ said Montag, quietly, ‘because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know’ (27).
People don’t talk about anything.... But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else (31).
When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness that never—quite—touched—bottom—never—never—quite—no not quite—touched—bottom… and you fell so fast you didn’t touch the sides either…never…quite…touched…anything (45).
We burnt a thousand books. We burnt a woman (50).
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while (52). Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts (55-56).
A philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour (56).
“…putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost” (62).
I want to hold on to this funny thing. God, it’s gotten big on me. I don’t know what it is. I’m so damned unhappy. I’m so mad, and I don’t know why (64). Montag’s narrative arc.
"The Sieve and the Sand"
Allusion to “Dover Beach” (99) Allusion to Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.): well-known Greek tragedian (86)
The Oresteis – trilogy of plays that was concerned with the curse of the House of Atreus – Agamemnon came home and his wife, Clytemnestra planned to kill him to get back at him for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia. Gone for ten years, has a new lover, his cousin. they debate what to do, the doors open, and Clytemnestra appears, standing over the corpses of her husband and Cassandra. She declares that she has killed him to avenge Iphigenia, and then is joined by her lover Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, whose brothers were cooked and served to Aegisthus' father by Agamemnon's father. They take over the government, and the Chorus declares that Clytemnestra's son Orestes will return from exile to avenge his father. He does, at age 20, eight years later, with his sister Electra. SIGNIFY - O'Neill, Eugene (1888-1953): famous American dramatist, whose works are often based on Greek myths. Signifies The Oresteia in his play, Mourning Becomes Electra
“The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling …, circling in emptiness” (73).
“Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are” (73). So, is it?
“Maybe books can get us half out of the cave” (74).
How could books in the novel function similarly to the one prisoner in the cave being liberated from his chains in the cave? Explain.
“‘I don’t talk things, sir,’ said Faber. ‘ I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive’” (75).
What, for you, is the difference? How does a person know he/she is alive?
I’m numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine (77).
How does the numbness relate to the pill bottle?
Why does Bradbury use a war metaphor for the pill bottle? How does this connect to other war references in the novel?
The terrible logic of the sieve… (78).
What is the terrible logic of the sieve?
Consider his other childhood experience in the first section of the novel: How do the two compare/contrast?
Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now” (81).
What is Bradbury, through the character of Faber, trying to say about God?
What else does he reference in the novel to emphasize this point? Find a specific quote for an example.
We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality (83).
What are the connotations of fireworks and flowers?
What critique is Faber offering on his society? How do these connotations help convey Faber’s point?
The salamander devours his tail (86).
What does this symbol mean? What does the image create?
What other imagery in the novel suggests this image? Find a specific quote for an example.
Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts. Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it (101)?
Who else is Guy Montag yelling at?
Why does the poem “Dover Beach” bring this out of Montag? What in the poem connects to this outpouring?
"Burning Bright"
“He walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark” (139). VOCAB Turpitude (n) depravity, moral corruption Ubiquitous (adj) widespread Umbrage (n) resentment, offense Catalyze (v) to inspire, charge Extol (v) to praise, revere Flout (v) to disobey openly Insular (adj.) separated and narrow-minded, tight-knit, closed off Pedant (n). a person concerned with minor rules in academics. Dogmatic.
QUOTES “‘Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why’” (113). Icarus – Flying too close to the sun because he adored the sublime (transcendent/inspiring) feeling of flying, his wax wings melted and he fell into the sea.
What does this teach you about life? What is the moral of the story?
“There was a crash like falling parts of a dream fashioned out warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms” (114).
Repetition of imagery – why? What do dreams reflect?
“‘Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But let’s not talk about them, eh? By the time consequences catch up with you, it’s too late…” (115).
What is Beatty talking about literally and metaphorically?
“‘What is it about fire that’s so lovely…’” (115)?
What is Beatty saying about the human condition?
“And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either. Fire was best for everything” (116)
What does Montag infer about burning and there being no solution?
“The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him…” (118)
What is the metaphor of the earthquake? Why is this so effective?
“Thinking back later he could never decide whether the hands or Beatty’s reaction to the hands gave him the final push toward murder” (119)
Again, Montag refers to his hands as the actors – why is that so effective? Why hands, what do they symbolize?
Can Montag ever be the same after murdering his fellow fireman?
Montag: “‘We never burned right…’” (119)
He doesn’t finish this statement, but what is the power of it? Why does he leave it hanging?
Burning becomes a savior for Montag: Faber must burn everything he touches (135)
“He walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark” (139).
“He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new” (140)
What does it mean? Describe a situation in which you have felt this way.
“The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him” (141)
What does this mean?
He watched the scene, fascinated, not wanting to move. It seemed so remote and no part of him; it was a play apart and separate, wondrous to watch, not without its strange pleasure. (134)
Why is this statement ironic?
“He carried a few drops of this rain with him on his face.” “”The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain” (139).
Rain also plays a large part in this novel and is associated with Montag. – What does it symbolize and why does it work? ( Pg 136) Artificial rain from lawn sprinkler
Water is a savior to him as well – The river is saves him. (139)
Auditory imagery: “The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source” (137).
Find another example of auditory imagery in the novel.
Montag describes the chase: “Twenty million Montags running, running like ancient flickery Keystone Comedy, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased” (138).
What is Bradbury’s purpose here, what is the difference between witnessing and doing?
“He felt the city rise” (138)
How can you feel a city rise, you can only see it. What is Bradbury doing here? What does the rise foreshadow?
Eyes from the cave: “He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues, and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face.” (139)
“The people sleepwalking in their hallways” - somnambulist (138).
“…the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time (140).
“He was not empty. There was more than enough her to fill him. There would always be more than enough” (144). And then, “his eyes stuffed with blackness, his ears stuffed with sound…”
How can one be stuffed with blackness?
“And the war began and ended in that instant” (158). “As quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished” (158).
Fixation on efficiency of war. War even moves beyond human time. Contrasted with Montag’s notice of how there was time around the fire to think and consider: “time enough to sit by this rusting track…and turn [the world] over with the eyes…” (146). “…we’ll have time to put things into ourselves” (161).
“…yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies” (158).
How does Bradbury’s writing style contrast his purpose?
“She saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own…” (160).
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
1953
"The Hearth and the Salamander"
VOCAB
Stolid – not easily stirred mentally. Unemotional.
Dystopia – a state that focuses on oppression, terror or deprivation
Minstrel – a lyric poet. (medieval times)
Proclivities (33) - a natural inclination, tendency; propensity
QUOTES
It was a pleasure to burn (3).
Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy.... He wore his happiness like a mask (12).
He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow (14) – Foreshadowing
liquid melancholy (16)
There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone (16).
“This is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow. Wad. Flush.” (17) Connotation of disposable - throwaway, not reusable.
I don't know anything anymore (18).
“Strangers come and violate you.” (So do firemen) This statement is foreshadowing
Bradbury’s purpose.
He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and a coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other (24).
THE HOUND
It doesn’t think anything we don’t want it to think. ‘That’s sad,’ said Montag, quietly, ‘because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that’s all it can ever know’ (27).
People don’t talk about anything.... But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else (31).
When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness that never—quite—touched—bottom—never—never—quite—no not quite—touched—bottom… and you fell so fast you didn’t touch the sides either…never…quite…touched…anything (45).
We burnt a thousand books. We burnt a woman (50).
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while (52).
Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts (55-56).
A philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour (56).
“…putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost” (62).
I want to hold on to this funny thing. God, it’s gotten big on me. I don’t know what it is. I’m so damned unhappy. I’m so mad, and I don’t know why (64).
Montag’s narrative arc.
"The Sieve and the Sand"
Allusion to “Dover Beach” (99)
Allusion to Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.): well-known Greek tragedian (86)
The Oresteis – trilogy of plays that was concerned with the curse of the House of Atreus – Agamemnon came home and his wife, Clytemnestra planned to kill him to get back at him for sacrificing their daughter, Iphigenia. Gone for ten years, has a new lover, his cousin. they debate what to do, the doors open, and Clytemnestra appears, standing over the corpses of her husband and Cassandra. She declares that she has killed him to avenge Iphigenia, and then is joined by her lover Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin, whose brothers were cooked and served to Aegisthus' father by Agamemnon's father. They take over the government, and the Chorus declares that Clytemnestra's son Orestes will return from exile to avenge his father. He does, at age 20, eight years later, with his sister Electra. SIGNIFY - O'Neill, Eugene (1888-1953): famous American dramatist, whose works are often based on Greek myths. Signifies The Oresteia in his play, Mourning Becomes Electra
“The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling …, circling in emptiness” (73).
“Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are” (73). So, is it?
“Maybe books can get us half out of the cave” (74).
“‘I don’t talk things, sir,’ said Faber. ‘ I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive’” (75).
I’m numb, he thought. When did the numbness really begin in my face? In my body? The night I kicked the pill bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine (77).
The terrible logic of the sieve… (78).
Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now” (81).
We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality (83).
The salamander devours his tail (86).
Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts. Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it (101)?
"Burning Bright"
“He walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark” (139).
VOCAB
Turpitude (n) depravity, moral corruption
Ubiquitous (adj) widespread
Umbrage (n) resentment, offense
Catalyze (v) to inspire, charge
Extol (v) to praise, revere
Flout (v) to disobey openly
Insular (adj.) separated and narrow-minded, tight-knit, closed off
Pedant (n). a person concerned with minor rules in academics. Dogmatic.
QUOTES
“‘Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why’” (113).
Icarus – Flying too close to the sun because he adored the sublime (transcendent/inspiring) feeling of flying, his wax wings melted and he fell into the sea.
“There was a crash like falling parts of a dream fashioned out warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms” (114).
“‘Others die, I go on. There are no consequences and no responsibilities. Except that there are. But let’s not talk about them, eh? By the time consequences catch up with you, it’s too late…” (115).
“‘What is it about fire that’s so lovely…’” (115)?
“And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either. Fire was best for everything” (116)
“The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him…” (118)
“Thinking back later he could never decide whether the hands or Beatty’s reaction to the hands gave him the final push toward murder” (119)
Montag: “‘We never burned right…’” (119)
“He walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark” (139).
“He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new” (140)
“The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him” (141)
He watched the scene, fascinated, not wanting to move. It seemed so remote and no part of him; it was a play apart and separate, wondrous to watch, not without its strange pleasure. (134)
“He carried a few drops of this rain with him on his face.” “”The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain” (139).
Auditory imagery: “The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source” (137).
Montag describes the chase: “Twenty million Montags running, running like ancient flickery Keystone Comedy, cops, robbers, chasers and the chased” (138).
“He felt the city rise” (138)
Eyes from the cave: “He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like gray animals peering from electric caves, faces with gray colorless eyes, gray tongues, and gray thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face.” (139)
“The people sleepwalking in their hallways” - somnambulist (138).
“…the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time (140).
“He was not empty. There was more than enough her to fill him. There would always be more than enough” (144). And then, “his eyes stuffed with blackness, his ears stuffed with sound…”
“And the war began and ended in that instant” (158). “As quick as the whisper of a scythe the war was finished” (158).
“…yet the heart is suddenly shattered, the body falls in separate motions, and the blood is astonished to be freed on the air; the brain squanders its few precious memories and, puzzled, dies” (158).
“She saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own…” (160).