FahrenheiFahrenheit 451t 451

“…government is best that governs least…” Right?

Ray Bradbury

“Fahrenheit 451--

“You don’t have to burn

books to destroy a

culture, just get people to stop reading them.”

• Anti-utopia: DYSTOPIA (how do we Anti-utopia: DYSTOPIA (how do we make paradise)? make paradise)? –By making it, we make: Opposite By making it, we make: Opposite

of paradise -> DYSTOPIAof paradise -> DYSTOPIA

HOW DOES HISTORY AFFECT THE MESSAGE?

When the novel was writtenWhen the novel was written

• HitlerHitler was just defeated, was just defeated,–He burned books during He burned books during the warthe war

Soviet Union also banned and burned books

1949: Communist China came into power and also burned books.

“In 1945, there were fewer than 10,000 TV sets in the country.”

By 1950: 6 million

About 60 million by 1960

ThemesThemes are the fundamental and often universal ideas Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas

explored in a literary workexplored in a literary work

Censorship

XKnowledge versus Ignorance

• The suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined.

Censorship

Bradbury focuses on the importance of learning and how it impacts our ability to make decisions. He believes that without the ability to think about what we’re doing, we’ll be led to do wrong.

Ignorance

Characters

• Guy Montag• Mildred Montag• Clarisse McClellan• Capt. Beatty• Professor Faber• Granger

Guy Montag

1. Main character2. About 30 years old3. Has been a

“fireman” for 10 years

4. 3rd generation “fireman”

5. Appropriately named after a paper-manufacturing company

• Realizes the emptiness of his life and starts to search for meaning in the books he is supposed to be burning

• He is sometimes rash and has a hard time thinking for himself

• He is determined to break free from the oppression of ignorance

Mildred Montag• Bradbury portrays

Mildred as a shell of a human being, devoid of any sincere emotional, intellectual, or spiritual substance.

• Her only attachment is to the “family” in the soap opera she watches

Montag’s brittle, sickly looking wife

She is obsessed with watching television

refuses to engage in frank conversation with her husband about their marriage or her feelings

Small-minded and childish,

Capt. Beatty• The captain of

Montag’s fire department

• Extremely well-read, paradoxically he hates books and people who insist on reading them.

• He is cunning and devious, and so perceptive that he appears to read Montag’s thoughts.

Professor Faber• A retired English

professor whom Montag encountered a year before the book opens.

• Faber still possesses a few precious books and aches to have more

• Faber competes with Beatty in the struggle for Montag’s mind

Clarisse McClellan• Beautiful 17-year old• Introduces Montag to

the world’s potential for beauty and meaning with her gentle innocence and curiosity.

• An outcast from society because of her odd habits, which include hiking, playing with flowers, and asking questions,

• She seems genuinely happy.

Granger• The leader of the

“Book People,” the group of hobo intellectuals Montag finds in the country.

• Granger is intelligent, patient, and confident in the strength of the human spirit.

• He is committed to preserving literature through the current Dark Age.

Symbols• Blood

• “The Hearth (fireplace) and the Salamander”

• “The Sieve and the Sand” • The Phoenix • Mirrors • Colors

It is the 24th century. books are considered dangerous and illegal. Nobody is allowed to own them. Most people are happy being plugged into their technology, where they do not have to think too hard. All books that are found are burned.

Guy Montag is a fireman. It is not his job to put out fires. It is his job to start them.

If a house is suspected to have books in it, Guy and the other firemen properly dispose of them.

Most often, the whole house must be destroyed. Sometimes the people in the house choose to die with their books.

The problem is, Guy is not so comfortable with the whole burning books thing.

He wonders why they must be burned.

What power do they have?

Why would somebody choose to die for their books?

It wouldn’t hurt just to take one and read it, right?

• Unfortunately for Guy, he lives in a society where censorship is king; a society where you don’t know if you can trust your friends, or even your wife; a society in which criminals are tracked by relentless mechanical hounds that never fail to bring down their victims….

Guy is supposed to uphold and enforce the law. Bringing home a book will cause a chain of events that not even he could have anticipated…

Blood• Blood appears

throughout the novel as a symbol of a human being’s repressed soul or primal, instinctive self.

• Ex: The replacement of Mildred’s diseased blood with fresh blood.

• Mildred, whose primal self has been irretrievably lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine.

Bradbury uses the electronic device to reveal Mildred’s corrupted insides and the thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her. The Snake has explored “the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water,” but its replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her.

“The Hearth and the Salamander” • Bradbury uses this conjunction of images

as the title of the first part of Fahrenheit 451. The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional symbol of the home; the salamander is one of the official symbols of the firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks. Both of these symbols have to do with fire, the dominant image of Montag’s life—the hearth because it contains the fire that heats a home, and the salamander because of ancient beliefs that it lives in fire and is unaffected by flames

“The Sieve and the Sand”

• The title of the second part of Fahrenheit 451, “The Sieve and the Sand,” is taken from Montag’s childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task. He compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory.

• Simply put, the sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag seeks, and the sieve the human mind seeking a truth that remains elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any permanent way.

The Phoenix

• After the bombing of the city, Granger compares mankind to a phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over and over again. Man’s advantage is his ability to recognize when he has made a mistake, so that eventually he will learn not to make that mistake anymore. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of culture and history. The symbol of the phoenix’s rebirth refers not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montag’s spiritual resurrection.

Mirrors

• At the very end of the novel, Granger says they must build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark recalls Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in “The Hearth and the Salamander.” Mirrors here are symbols of self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.

Most Commonly Challenged Books

• A Wrinkle in Time: Madeleine L’Engle• To Kill a Mockingbird: Harper Lee• Their Eyes were Watching God: Zora

Neale Hurston• 1984: Beorge Orwell• The Adventures of Huckleberry

Finn and Tom Sawyer: Mark Twain• Beloved and The Bluest Eye: Toni

Morrison• Brave New World: Aldous Huxley

• The Catcher in the Rye: John Salinger

• Catch-22: Joseph Heller

• The Chocolate War: Robert Cormier

• A Day No Pigs Would Die: Robert Newton Peck

• Flowers for Algernon: Daniel Keyes

• The Giver: Lois Lowry

• Go Ask Alice: Anonymous

• Goosebumps (series): R.L. Stine

• Harry Potter (series): J.K. Rowling

• The Great Gatsby: F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Julie of the Wolves: Jean Craighead George

• Lord of the Flies: William Golding

• My Brother Sam is Dead: James Lincoln Collier & Christopher Collier

• Of Mice and Men: John Steinbeck

• The Outsiders and That Was Then, This is Now: S.E. Hinton

• The Pigman: Paul Zindel

• Slaughterhouse-5: Kurt Vonnegut

• Summer of my German Soldier: Bette Greene

• The Sun Also Rises: Ernest Hemingway

• Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret & Blubber: Judy Blume

• Black Boy: Richard Wright

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Maya Angelou

Mississippi School District Bans Book on Censorship: "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury

• February 1, 1999 West Marion High School in Foxworth, a rural Mississippi town, is the place where recent events aimed at censorship occurred. The book, Fahenreit 451, was on the reading list for several of the English classes. However, after a parent complained to the superintendent about the use of the word "God damn" in the book, the book was removed from the required reading list. Interestingly, the complaint did not surface until the book report was due -- more than a month after the reading assignment was given.

Banned• http://www.banned-books.com/bblista-i.html

• YOU ARE NOT ALLOWEDNOT ALLOWED TO READ THESE BOOKS!

• Go ahead… I DARE YOU!