Fahrenheit 451
Before beginning the book:
DUE: ______
The definition of affect: affect is a verb that means to influence.
Example: Explain how technology affects modern day society.
The definition of effect: effect is a noun, it often refers to the result of something
Example: Explain the effects of technology in modern day society.
Your Assignment:
Part I: Choosing to focus on either: the automobile, cell phones or smart phones or television. In a well-developed, typed, double spaced essay, discuss one of the pieces of technology listed above. Remember- only choose one and be sure you are discussing either the AFFECTS or the EFFECTS. Do not confuse the two.
Part II: Familiarize yourself with Bradbury and life during the 1950’s. What seem to be important aspects of both Bradbury’s life AND the 50’s?
Read the short article on censorship. What are your views on censorship? Can you see why some texts might be censored?
Assignments as we read: To celebrate Bradbury’s desire that we spend more time on personal communication and less time in front of a screen, we will discuss below questions. As this is a graded discussion, you participation is paramount as are quality responses.
Discussions are worth 20 pts per day- to receive full credit, one must provide two or more insightful comments throughout the discussion.
I will evaluate you on the following: clarity of claim (3 pts), evidence (specific text evidence with reference to page numbers) (4 pts), and clear explanation of HOW evidence links to claim (3 pts).
Quality matters more than quantity here.
Should you NOT speak during class, you can write TWO full paragraphs answering TWO questions for that assigned section. These are due the DAY AFTER the class discussion.
After finishing Part I:
DUE: ______
1. Most of the characters, including Guy Montag actually enjoy aspects of the world they live in. What might be appealing about this world? Cite specific examples from the text.
2. Why do you think this section is entitled “The Hearth and the Salamander”?
3. Good writers can use metaphors and similes to formulate a desired tone. Choose FIVE metaphors and simile’s from the Part I. Write the sentence (or sentences) down and then explain the tone elicited from each.
4. A centrifuge is a device that rotates or spins at a very high speed in order to separate things. Bradbury uses the word centrifuge to describe the society in which Montag lives. “When it [the television show] was 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 into emptiness.” Find three other examples either specifically using the word centrifuge or making direct references to the word. Explain why this device is an appropriate symbol of Montag’s society.
5. Captain Beatty is an articulate spokesman for the established order of the society both he and Montag live in. Do you feel that Beatty is too one sided and accepting of the society or do you see that he is a rationale thinker? Keep in mind the similarities between our own society and the society in Bradbury’s novel as you answer this question.
6. Mildred, Beatty, Clarisse and Guy are all symbols of types of people within a society. For example, Guy Montag is that person who questions and does not take what society offers at face value. Discuss who/what each character symbolically represents.
7. Eerily, Bradbury originally wrote F451 as a short story called “The Fireman” ……in 1950! Before televisions were common in households, before families had multiple automobiles and before the technology we have today played such an influential role in society. How can we see a bit of ourselves and society in F451? Look at your own life and examine how you have allowed yourself to become heavily influenced by “societal norms.”
8. How do Mildred and Clarisse challenge Montag differently? Cite text evidence.
After finishing Part II :
DUE: ______
1. You can only save five books – What are they? Why?
2. Montag still struggles with Beatty in one ear and now Faber in the other (literally). Go into the differences between these two men, their impact on Montag, their motivations, their philosophies, their takes on happiness and success. What is Bradbury getting at?
3. The happiness theme ties into the theme of entertainment. Are we really happy when kept occupied or amused? What parallels do you see between Beatty’s ideas and our true society regarding occupying people’s minds with trivia, etc. How about the run in with Mildred’s friends (Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles)? Check it out again (pgs. 94 – 101). Does it remind you of us?
4. List five realizations Fahrenheit 451 reinforces regarding our society.
5. Explain what Faber and Montag talk about. What does Faber insist is missing from the society?
6. Explain the confrontation between Beatty and Montag.
7. What does Mildred say about why television is better than books? What is the essential difference between television and books?
8. Bradbury has a very clear and poignant opinion about his own society here. Explain what aspect of history he is referring to and what his opinion is. “Jesus, God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in the hell did these bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? 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? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much?”
9. Describe the mechanical Hound. Do you see any similarities to the Hound in our society?
10. How does Bradbury describe books? What literary devices does he use? Find two excerpts from the novel. What do these descriptions do for the reader?
11. Does our sympathy for Montag increase because the story is told in third person limited?
12. Who seems to be the antagonist in the story?
After finishing Part III:
DUE: ______
1. Describe the run-in Montag has with the car full of children. What is odd about this encounter?
2. Why does the society report that they’ve caught Montag, when in reality, they caught a totally innocent man?
3. Provide three examples of Bradbury’s reference to mirrors. What do these references symbolize and how do they add depth to the story?
4. Compare Bradbury’s novel to another modern novel with a similar theme. Describe the similarity between the two novels and elucidate on why many writers choose to comment on dystopian societies like the one Bradbury created in F451?
5. Is anyone to blame for the change in Beatty or Montag? As we follow Montag’s life; we are witness to the progression of his thoughts and own individuality. The opposite happens with Beatty. Who/what causes these changes in both men?
6. Consider the titles of the first two sections, “The Hearth and the Salamander” and “The Sieve and the Sand.” What does figurative language ask of the reader/ Does exploring a novel’s figurative language train us in precisely the thinking that Beatty hates?
7. Is Montag the only character who undergoes a transformation in the novel?
An Analysis of Character
29 pts ______
Group Names: ______
Analyze each character as you complete this chart. Use specific text evidence to support your claims.
Clarisse / Montag / Beatty / MildredPhysical Attributes
Dominant Character Traits
Apparent Weaknesses
How does the character’s personality affect their actions?
How do other character’s respond to this character?
How self-aware is the character?
Predictions about the character?
Foiled!
Group Names: ______
A foil has traits that contrast with the protagonist and highlights important features of the main character’s personality. There are often many foils in a story but the most important foil, the antagonist, opposes the protagonist (Mercutio was a foil to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet) and can bar or complicate the protagonist’s success. Today you are going to explore the various foils in Fahrenheit 451.
Character / Foil and brief rationale 3 pts each / Text Evidence and Analysis- Choose two quotes to support your claims and rationalize beliefs 10 pts eachMildred
Montag
Beatty
Figurative Language
Bradury uses literary devices like we use toilet paper-he considers them a necessity to building the plot in stories he creates. Below are three passages from the text. Choose ONE and in a well-developed three paragraph essay, analyze the argument Bradbury creates and how the devices allow the reader to better understand the argument.
1. pg 95 “Montag said nothing but stood looking at the women’s faces as he had once looked at the faces of saints in a strange church he had entered when he was a child. The faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time, trying to be of that religion, trying to know what that religion was, trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood-ruby lips. But there was nothing, nothing; it was a stroll through another store, and his currency strange and unusable there, and his passion cold, when he touched the wood and plaster and clay. So it was not, in his own parlor, with these women twisting their chairs under his gaze, lightning cigarettes, blowing smoke, touching their sun-fired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire from his look. Their faces grew haunted with silence. They leaned forward at the sound of Montag’s swallowing his final bite of food. They listened to his feverish breathing. The three empty walls of the room were like the pale brows of sleeping giants now, empty of dreams. Montag felt that if you touched these three staring brows you would feel a fine salt sweat on your fingertips. The perspiration gathered with the silence and the sub audible trembling around and about and in the women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode.”
2. pg 83 “”Number one: Do you know why books such as this are important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, airless, expressionless. 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. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth? But when he was held, rootless, in midair, by Hercules, he perished easily. Fi there isn’t something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first thing I said we need. Quality texture of information”
F 451 RA Scoring Guide
40 pts
The score reflects a judgment of the quality of the essay as a whole. As this was an out of class essay, the essay should represent a finished product and not a draft, as in-class essays are scored. Essays with noticeable grammar and mechanics issues will not be scored higher than a 2.
9 Essays earning a score of 9 meet the criteria for an 8 essay and, in addition, are especially full or apt in their analysis or demonstrate particularly impressive control of language.
EFFECTIVE
8 Essays earning a score of 8 respond directly to the prompt effectively. They effectively analyze how Bradbury crafts the text to reveal his character’s argument on the society in which they live. These essays may refer to the passage explicitly or implicitly. The prose demonstrates an ability to control a wide range of the elements of effective writing but is not necessarily flawless.
7 Essays earning a score of 7 fit the description of 6 essays but provide a more complete analysis or demonstrate a more mature prose style.
ADEQUATE
6 Essays earning a score of 6 respond to the prompt adequately. They adequately analyze how Bradbury crafts the text to reveal his character’s argument on the society in which they live. The essay may refer to the passage explicitly or implicitly. The writing may contain lapses in diction or syntax but generally the prose is clear.
5 Essays earning a score of 5 analyze how Bradbury crafts the text to reveal his character’s argument on the society in which they live. The writing may contain lapses in diction or syntax, but it usually conveys the student’s ideas.