28th March 2017

Fahrenheit

  • The novel starts with a scene where Montag and the other firemen are fuelling a fire

“With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history” p1

In this quotation the firehoses that spurt kerosene are being compared to great snakes – generating a direct comparison between the destructive work of the firemen and the mythological evil of serpents

  • Montag discovers his wife Mildred in bed having taken an overdose. He calls in the operators to pump her stomach and give her a blood transfusion using arcane specialised equipment. They are, apparently, having a busy night.

“Got to clean them out both ways” p19

Here, the ‘operator’ whose job it was to operate the machines that pump the stomaches of people who have attempted suicide by over-dose was shown to have an attitude more like an over-worked plumber.

He was described as smoking and eager to get on to his next job.

  • Montag when talking with the girl starts to question his way of living

“and then, very slowly, as he walked, he tilted his head back in the rain, for just a few moments, and opened his mouth…”

After the girl talking with montag he started to have a bond with her and starts to question the social norms of their time. montag tilting his head back to taste the rain shows that the girl has an influence on him

  • A mechanical hound growls and scares montag 

“Come off it. It doesn’t like or dislike. it just functions” p26

in the quotation it shows that the mechanical hound was programmed to growl and be threatening towards montag leaving question to why the hound was programed to do so

Montag goes into a house in which he needs to light books on fire but the owner of the house decides to stay there with the burning books in a suicide attempt

The woman replied quietly “i want to stay here” p39

The leaves montag in a state of confusion, that a girl would rather die with her books than live without them and wants to read them to see why theses fanatics like their books so much

  • Montag questions the life he lives as he or his wife cannot remember how the met

“are they husband and wife, are they divorced, engaged, what? Good god, nothings connected up” p46

This shows a possibility of an alternative reality in which the government controls who marries who (my opinion)

  • Montag attends a fire where a woman kills herself by self-immolation (setting herself alight)
  • Montag steals a book and takes it home. He claims to be sick and doesn’t go to work
  • Beatty visits Montag in his home and challenges him
  • Montag convinces his wife Mildred to turn of her ‘Parlour’ and read the books he has been collecting instead
  • Montag visits Faber, an old English professor who shows him a two-way communication device he has been developing. He gives it to Faber
  • When Mildred has friends over to watch the Parlour, Montag switches it off and reads them a banned poem
  • Montag then returns to the firehouse and is interrogated by Beatty 
  • Montage and the firemen goto montages house on a call

 

 

 

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