Montag is angry. “It was a pleasure to burn” (3).
“Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame” (4). "Grin" is a form of a smile, but it is much more specific.
Note all the allusions to music. He’s like a conductor (3). He’s a “minstrel man” (4). He’s so like a little boy.
Note all of Montag's inappropriate laughter. He's nervous, afraid. Clarisse brings something out in him.
Pay attention to the way Clarisse is described. She is pale, like the moon. She also differs from her peers. How?
Montag tells her she thinks too much. SILENCE—how that makes people uncomfortable.
“They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances” (9).
Note Montag’s own home-life:
“He opened the bedroom door.
“It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon has set. Complete darkness, not a hint of the silver world outside, the windows tightly shut, the chamber a tomb world where no sound from the great city could penetrate. The room was not empty” (11).
Dissociation: When someone experiences a traumatic emotional event, he/she may numb him/herself to what is actually going on. The event seems to be happening to someone else.
Note the dissociation—and the connection to “happiness”:
“He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (12).
“His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible treads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum in that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time” (12).
Why doesn’t he want the moon to come in the room? (12)
“So, with the feeling of a man who will die in the next hour for the lack of air, he felt his way toward his open, separate, and therefore cold bed” (12).
“Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow. There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears, and her eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out her nostrils, and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came” (13).
Note the dissociative quality of the passage!
“As he stood there the sky over the house screamed. There was a tremendous ripping sound as if two giant hands had torn ten thousand miles of black lines down the seam. Montag was cut in half. He felt his chest chopped down and split apart. The jet bombers going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them, one and one and one and another and another and another, did all the screaming for him. He opened his own mouth and let their shriek come down and out between his bared teeth. The house shook. The flare went out in his hand. The moonstones vanished. He felt his hand plunge toward the telephone” (13-14).
NOTE THE USE OF PASSIVE. Why does he do this? Tie to dissociation:
“’I don’t know anything any more,’ he said, and let a sleep lozenge dissolve on his tongue” (18).
She asks why he is a fireman and it makes him uncomfortable. And yet when she leaves, he tilts his head and tastes the rain (24).
What is the significance of the Mechanical Hound? What is the significance of dogs in our culture?
Clarisse asks Montag why he doesn’t have any children. This distresses him.
“’Let’s talk about something else. Have you ever smelled old leaves? Don’t they smell like cinnamon?’” (29).
He begins to laugh when she asks him if he’s looked at billboards.
Clarisse notices that Montag's laugh has changed. How has it changed?
Why is Clarisse considered antisocial at school? How do most teenagers behave? How does Clarisse feel about them?
What does Clarisse mean by, “’People don’t talk about anything’” (31)?
What eventually happens to Clarisse? Be specific.
Radio background noise about the war. There is a lot of "white noise."
All the firemen seem to look alike. He notices this for the first time. “These men were all mirror images of himself! Were all firemen picked for their looks as well as their proclivities?” (33).
Montag asks about the man whose library they burned and Beatty tells him he went crazy. How does Montag react to this?
“Beatty arranged his cards quietly. ‘Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us’” (33).
Why does Montag make himself vulnerable to Beatty in the way that he does?
Note this description of the house:
“It was a flaking three-story house in the ancient part of the city, a century old if it was a day, but like all houses it had been given a thin fireproof plastic sheath many years ago, and this preservative shell seemed to be the only thing holding it in the sky” (35).
“They crashed through the front door and grabbed at a woman, though she was not running, she was not trying to escape. She was only standing, weaving from side to side, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness in the wall, as if they had struck her a terrible blow upon the head. Her tongue was moving in her mouth, and her eyes seemed to be trying to remember something and then they remembered and her tongue moved again” (35-36).
Beatty slaps the old woman “with amazing objectivity” (36).
“Next thing they were up in the musty blackness swinging silver hatchets at doors that were, after all, unlocked, tumbling through like boys all rollick and shout. ‘Hey!’ a fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stairwell. How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victim’s mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You weren’t hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldn’t be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things don’t scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Who’s got a match!” (36-37).
Note how the men numb themselves from the reality of what is happening. Note too, the almost religious language:
“But now, tonight, someone had slipped. This woman was spoiling the ritual. The men were making too much noise, laughing, joking, to cover her terrible accusing silence below. She made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in their nostrils as they plunged about....Montag felt an immense irritation. She shouldn’t be here, on top of everything!” (37).
Note how passive the language is!
“Montag’s hand closed like a mouth, crushed the book with wild devotion, with an insanity of mindlessness to his chest. The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies” (37).
“Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief. Now it plunged the book back under his arm, pressed it tight to sweating armpit, rushed out empty, with a magician’s flourish! Look here! Innocent! Look!
“He gazed, shaken, at that white hand. He held it way out, as if he were farsighted. He held it close, as if he were blind” (37-38).
Beatty calls out to Montag: “’Don’t stand there, idiot!’” (38).
“The woman knelt among the books, touching the drenched leather and cardboard, reading the gilt titles with her fingers while her eyes accused Montag” (38).
We should probably read "The Tower of Babel" story.
Beatty counts as Montag tries to get the woman out (39).
She opens her hand to reveal “an ordinary kitchen match” (39).
“The woman’s hand twitched on the single matchstick. The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her. Montag felt the hidden book pound like a heart against his chest” (39).
Note how ACTIVE the language is here:
“On the front porch where she had come to weigh them quietly with her eyes, her quietness a condemnation, the woman stood motionless.
“Beatty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene” (39).
Master Ridley reference—Nicholas Ridley who was burnt alive at Oxford for heresy in 1555.
“Late in the night he looked over at Mildred. She was awake. There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her seashell was tamped in her ear again, and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blackness above her in the ceiling” (42).
“And suddenly she was so strange he couldn’t believe he knew her at all. He was in someone else’s house, like those other jokes people told of the gentleman, drunk, coming home late late at night, unlocking the wrong door, entering a wrong room, and bedding with a stranger and getting up early and going to work and neither of the wiser” (42).
Montag is upset because he can’t remember where they met.
“And he thought of her lying on the bed with the two technicians standing straight over her, not bent with concern, but only standing straight, arms folded. And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn’t cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at the death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty” (44).
Why are the technicians standing over Mildred?
Mildred’s television family instead of a real one.
“A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bones were almost shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobble in his head. He was a victim of concussion. 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 and 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.
“The thunder faded. The music died.
“’There,’ said Mildred.
“And it was indeed remarkable. Something had happened. Even though the people in the walls of the room had barely moved, and nothing had really been settled, you had the impression that someone had turned on a washing machine or sucked you up in a gigantic vacuum. You drowned in music and pure cacophony. He came out of the room sweating and on the point of collapse. Behind him, Mildred sat in her chair and the voice went on again” (45).
The people in the walls are angry and Montag asks Mildred why they are angry. She doesn’t even know if they are related or not, but she thinks they are.
“He felt he was one of the creatures electronically inserted between the slots of the phono-color walls, speaking, but the speech not piercing the crystal barrier. He could only pantomime, hoping she would turn his way and see him. They would not touch through the glass” (46-47).
He asks her about Clarisse. Mildred doesn’t really pay attention, then answers, “’I think she’s gone’” (47).
Insect imagery. “He heard a faint rustle. Her hand moved. The electric thimble moved like a praying mantis on the pillow, touched by her hand. Now it was in her ear again, humming” (48).
Mildred’s description:
“Mildred stood over his bed, curiously. He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He could remember her no other way” (48).
He asks her to turn off her family for a sick man. She will only turn it down. Note this interaction: Montag vomits. Mildred asks him why.
“He looked with dismay at the floor. ‘We burnt an old woman with her books.’
“’It’s a good thing the rug’s washable.’ She fetched a mop and worked on it. ‘I went to Helen’s last night’” (49-50).
“’You should have seen her, Millie!’
“’She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should’ve thought of that. I hate her. She’s got you going and next thing you know we’ll be out, no house, no job, nothing.’
“’You weren’t there, you didn’t see,’ he said. ‘There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.’
“’She was simple-minded.’
“’She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burnt her.’
“’That’s water under the bridge’” (51).
Beatty tells him the history of firemen, starting with the Civil War. He suggests that reading isn’t needed any more in the fast-paced world.
Mildred finds a book.
“Beatty opened his eyes wide.
“Mildred’s hand had frozen behind the pillow. Her fingers were tracing the book’s outline and as the shape became familiar her face looked surprised and then stunned. Her mouth opened to ask a question…” (56).
Beatty on Clarisse:
“Luckily, ones like her don’t happen often. We know how to nip most of them in the bud, early.... If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of “facts” they feel stuffed, but absolutely “brilliant” with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can, nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won’t be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, I’ve tried it; to hell with it. So bring on your clubs and parties, your acrobats and magicians, your daredevils, jet cars, motorcycle helicopters, your sex and heroin, more of everything to do with automatic reflex. If the drama is bad, if the film says nothing, if the play is hollow, sting me,,,. I’ll think I’m responding to the play, when it’s only a tactile reaction to vibration. But I don’t care. I just like solid entertainment” (61).
“The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is we’re the Happiness boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Don’t let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I don’t think you realize how important you are, we are, to our happy world as it stands now” (62).
Beatty offers Montag an “out.” Mildred tries to reason with him.
“He began to put on his clothes, moving restlessly about the bedroom. ‘Yes, and it might be a good idea. Before I hurt someone. Did you hear Beatty? Did you listen to him? He knows all the answers. He’s right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And yet I kept sitting her saying to myself, I’m not happy, I’m not happy’.
“’I am,’ Mildred’s mouth beamed. “And proud of it’” (65).
Is Mildred happy? I don't think so.
He shows her his book collection. “’But now it looks as if we’re in this together’” (66). Is that fair to Mildred? As a married couple, isn't she in on this too?
What does Mildred try to do to the books? Why?
PART TWO: THE SIEVE AND THE SAND
Montag goes on and on, almost as though speaking to himself. Mildred fumes. He brings up her attempted suicide again.
Now, the background noise:
“The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness” (73).
He thinks of Faber, the old English Professor.
“’I don’t talk things, sir,’ said Faber. ‘I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive’” (75).
Montag finds Faber’s name under “FUTURE INVESTIGATIONS (?)” (75).
Mildred is excited about a visit from “the ladies” (76)—not friends, but “the ladies.” Montag shows her a Bible.
“Mildred’s mouth twitched. ‘See what you’re doing? You’ll ruin us! Who’s more important, me or that Bible?’ She was beginning to shriek now, sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat” (76).
Mildred almost acts like she does love him when she tells Montag to give the mechanical dog a kick for her (77).
Montag realizes how numb he has been. He remembers being a child trying to fill a sieve with sand (78).
On the subway, he suddenly realizes that he’s carrying the Bible in the open. He tries to read it but is distracted by an ad for “’Denham’s Dentifrice’” (78).
This is juxtaposed with lines from the Psalms: “Consider the lilies of the field” (78).
The people on the train are speaking with the ad. Pay attention to the placement of the commas and what that does to the passage:
“’Denham’s dental detergent.’
“’Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The people who had been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice, Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice. The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people were pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great air train fell down its shaft in the earth” (79).
Note the verbs and how the sentences are written:
“The train hissed to its stop.
“’Knoll View!’ A cry.
“’Denham’s.’ A whisper.
“Montag’s mouth barely moved. ‘Lilies…’
“The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then did he leap past the other passengers, screaming in his mind, plunge thought he slicing door only in time. He ran on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifted after him. ‘Denham’s Denham’s Denham’s,’ the train hissed like a snake. The train vanished in its hole” (80).
Note Faber’s Description:
“The front door opened slowly. Faber peered out, looking very old in the light and very fragile and very much afraid. The old man looked as if he had not been out of the house in ten years. He and the white plaster walls inside were much the same. There was white in the flesh of his mouth and his cheeks and his hair was white and his eyes had faced with white in the vague blueness there. Then his eyes touched on the book under Montag’s arm and he did not look so old any more and not quite as fragile. Slowly, his fear went” (80).
“’Sit down.’ Faber backed up, as if he feared the book might vanish if he took his eyes from it” (81).
Why does Montag say, “’My wife’s dying’”? (81)
Faber takes the book:
“’It’s been a long time. I’m not a religious man. But it’s been a long time.’ Faber turned the pages, stopping here and there to read. ‘It’s as good as I remember. Lord, how they’ve changed it in our “parlors” these days. 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, al sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.’ Faber sniffed the book. ‘Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go.’ Faber turned the pages. ‘Mr. (81) Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the “guilty,” but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me, by then. Now it’s too late.’ Faber closed the Bible” (82).
Montag: “’Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read’” (82).
Faber calls Montag “’a hopeless romantic’” (82). What does he mean by this?
What three things are missing, according to Faber?
Why are books hated and feared?
Montag responds, “’Oh, but we’ve plenty of off-hours.’
“’Off-hours, yes. But time to think? If you’re not driving a hundred miles an hour, at a clip where you can’t think of anything else but the danger, then you’re playing some game or sitting in some room where you can’t argue with the four-wall televisor. Why? The televisor is “real.” It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn’t time to protest, “What nonsense!”’” (84).
What happens when Montag starts saying “we” as part of his plan? Faber says no (85).
What does Faber say about the fireman structure? What needs to be done?
Faber: “’The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt’” (85).
“’Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord’” (87).
Why does Montag rip the Bible?
Is Faber a hero or a coward?
How is Faber going to assist Montag in Montag's desires?
“Far away across town in the night, the faintest whisper of a turned page. ‘The Book of Job.’
“The moon rose in the sky as Montag walked, his lips moving just a trifle” (93).
Note how like the Lady Macbeth-drunken Macbeth scene it is when Montag brings out a book of poetry.
“They rounded the corner in thunder and siren, with concussion of tires, with scream of rubber, with a shift of kerosene bulk in the glittery brass tank, like the food in the stomach of a giant, with Montag’s fingers jolting off the silver rail, swinging into cold space, with the wind tearing his hair back from his head, with the wind whistling in his teeth, and him all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women in his parlor tonight, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his silly damned reading of a gook to them. How like trying to put out fires with water pistols, how senseless and insane. One rage turned in for another. One anger displacing another. When would he stop being entirely mad and be quiet, very quiet indeed?” (109).
“Beatty’s pink, phosphorescent cheeks glimmered in the high darkness, and he was smiling furiously” (110).
PART THREE: BURNING BRIGHT
Note the circus imagery.
“Lights flicked on and house doors opened all down the street, to watch the carnival set up. Montag and Beatty stared, one with dry satisfaction, the other with disbelief, at the house before them, this main ring in which torches would be juggled and fire eaten” (113).
Note how literate Beatty is.
Icarus image. Why? Tell the story.
“’Well,’ said Beatty, ‘Now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why’” (113).
“The front door opened; Mildred came down the steps, running one suitcase held with a dreamlike clenching rigidity in her fist, as a beetle taxi hissed to the curb” (114).
“She ran past with her body stiff, her face floured with powder, her mouth gone, without lipstick” (114).
“Montag walked but did not feel his feet touch the cement and then the night grasses. Beatty flicked his igniter nearby and the small orange flame drew his fascinated gaze.”
FIRE STARTERS—PROMETHEUS. FIRE AS PURIFICATION
Beatty: “’What is fire? It’s a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledygook about friction and molecules. But they don’t really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you’re a burden. The fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical’” (115).
“A great nuzzling gout of fire leapt out to lap the books and knock them against the wall. He stepped into the bedroom and fired twice and the twin beds went up in a great simpering whisper, with more heat and passion and light than he would have supposed them to contain. He burnt the bedroom walls and the cosmetics chest because he wanted to change everything, the chairs, the tables, and in the dining room the silverware and plastic dishes, everything that showed that he had lived here in this empty house with a strange woman who would forget him tomorrow, who had gone and quite forgotten him already, listening to her Seashell Radio pour on her and in on her as she rode across town, alone. 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 there was no problem either. Fire was best for everything” (116).
“The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers” (117).
This, again, is Icarus imagery.
Note how he kills the television.
“And then he came to the parlor where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their whit thoughts and their snowy dreams. And he shot a bolt at each of the three blank walls and the vacuum hissed out at him. The emptiness made an even emptier whistle, a senseless scream. He tried to think about the vacuum upon which the nothingness had performed, but he could not. He held his breath so the vacuum could not get into his lungs. He cut off its terrible emptiness, drew back, and gave the entire room a gift of one huge bright yellow flower of burning. The fire-proof plastic sheath on everything was cut wide and the house began to shudder with flames” (117).
Faber keeps telling Montag to get out. Beatty strikes Montag and the “green bullet” comes out (118). Beatty threatens to go after Montag and this sends him over the edge.
Is Beatty's death a murder or a suicide, a kind of "death by fireman"?
What does Montag do to the other firemen?
It occurs to him that Beatty was suicidal. Or is this wishful thinking on his part in order to assuage his own guilt? (122)
Note the dissociative quality: “Feet ran in the far end of the alley” (123).
AND: “’Get up!’ he told himself. ‘Dammit, get up!’ he said to the leg, and stood. The pains were spikes driven in the kneecap and then only darning needles and then only common ordinary safety pins, and afar he had shagged along fifty more hops and jumps, filling his hand with slivers from the board fence, the prickling was like someone blowing a spray of scalding water on that leg. And the leg was at last his own leg again. He had been afraid that running might break the loose ankle. Now, sucking al the night into his open mouth and blowing it out pale, with all the blackness left heavily inside himself, he set out in a steady jogging pace. He carried the books in his hands.
“He thought of Faber” (123).
Note this change in Montag. He is no longer counting: “He decided not to count his steps. He looked neither to left nor right” (126).
Note the rhythms:
“The beetle was rushing. The beetle was roaring. The beetle raised its speed. The beetle was whining. The beetle was in high thunder. The beetle came skimming. The beetle came in a single whistling trajectory fired from an invisible rifle. It was up to 120 mph. It was up to 140 at least. Montag clamped his jaws. The heat of the racing headlights burnt his cheeks, it seemed, and jittered his eyelids and flushed the sour sweat out all over his body” (127).
Almost killed by children—just for fun (128).
Faber says he feels alive, for the first time in years (131). Isn't Faber living vicariously through Montag? is that fair?
Even war seems remote since they have their own troubles (132).
Montag gives Faber some money. “’I might be dead by noon; use this’” (132).
Faber tells Montag to head for the river and to follow the railroad lines. Faber finally has the courage to meet with a printer, someone he knows in Saint Louis (132).
Montag’s name is on the news. The news anchor says a new Mechanical Hound has been employed and that these beasts never fail (133). Is this true? Explain.
“’The Mechanical Hound is now landing by helicopter at the site of the Burning!’
“And there on the small screen was the burnt house, and the crowd and something with a sheet over it and out of the sky, fluttering, came the helicopter like a grotesque flower” (134).
Dissociation:
“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. That’s all for me, he thought, that’s all taking place just for me, by God” (134).
He describes the spectacle of the hut as “The one man carnival” (135)
“The Mechanical Hound turned and plunged away from Faber’s house down the alley again.
“Montag snapped his gaze to the sky. The helicopters were closer, a great blowing of insects to a single light source” (137).
DISSOCIATIVE QUALITY:
“With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess game he was witnessing, move by move” (138).
DISSOCIATION:
“He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great séance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new” (140).
NOW HE BECOMES SOMEWHAT PSYCHOLOGICALLY INTEGRATED:
"He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood” (140).
“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? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time and burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in this life” (140-141).
“One of them had to stop burning. The sun wouldn’t, certainly. So it looked as if it had to be Montag and the people he had worked with until a few short hours ago. Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people’s heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, thrush and dry-rot, and men with matches. The world was full of burning of all types and sizes. Now the guild of the asbestos weaver must open shop very soon” (141).
“He felt his heel bump land, touch pebbles and rocks, scrape sand. The river had moved him toward shore” (141).
He remembers visiting a farm as a boy. Note the parallels between this and the church visit. He’s always an outsider:
“Now the dry smell of hay, the motion of the waters, made him think of sleeping in fresh hay in a lonely barn away from the loud highways, behind a quiet farmhouse, and under an ancient windmill that whirred like the sound of the passing years overhead. He lay in the high barn loft all night, listening to distant animals and insects and trees, the little motions and stirrings” (142).
“During the night, he thought, below the loft, he would hear a sound like feet moving, perhaps. He would tense and sit up. The sound would move away. He would lie back and look out the loft window, very late in the night, and see the lights go out in the farmhouse itself, until a very young and beautiful woman would sit in an unlit window, braiding her hair. It would be hard to see her, but her face would be like the face of the girl so long ago in his past now, so very long ago, the girl who had known the weather and never been burnt by the fireflies, the girl who had known what dandelions meant rubbed off on your chin. Then, she would be gone from the warm window and appear again upstairs in her moon-whitened room. And then, to the sound of death, the sound of jets cutting the sky in two black pieces beyond the horizon, he would lie in the loft, hidden and safe, watching those strange new stars over the rim of the earth, feeling from the soft color of dawn” (142-143).
First signs of life come from a fire ahead. “That small motion, that white and red color, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him.
“It was not burning. It was warming” (143).
Montag has Ecclesiastes and a little of Revelations (150).
Granger and his grandfather and the things he left behind (156).
What does the phoenix have to do with anything?
[1] Repression: Feelings held in, often because some feelings make people uncomfortable. Sooner or later, they have to come out. Repression might cause them to come out in inappropriate or destructive ways.
