Narrative
Up to this point class has been devoted to an encapsulated version of the history of education in America and the progress that has been made over the last several hundred years. Most students today would not even consider the possibility that they would be required to pay for schooling until they reach college. As to who is allowed to attend, anyone of school age is allowed to attend with modifications for special needs students. What is allowed to be taught in school? Many students confuse what goes on in school with their First Amendment rights. They don't believe their lockers should be searched or that books from the Ghetto Library should be banned from counting as book report reading.
At this stage students will be ready to begin the study of the novel. I will ask them how to read a novel and they will look at me as if I have suddenly lost my mind. I will take them through the reading of the first sentence and the first paragraph of any novel, pointing out how the tone is set and the reader is prepared for what follows. Next I will explain the stasis/instability/new stasis3 formula to show how a story starts before the problem, the stasis; moves on to the turmoil, the instability; and, through this journey creates a reorganized order of things; a new stasis.
Then it will be time to sample Ray Bradbury's fear for the future. Readers of Bradbury know of his speculations that technology will be the undoing of mankind and that if machines do too much of the work for humans it will make them soft, both physically, and soft in the head. Upon beginning the study of Fahrenheit 451, students are often confused and sometimes turned off by the opening section. It is a completely alien idea that a fireman's job should be to burn books. At first, many students will applaud this idea thinking that it would be great to be relieved of all the homework they are assigned. This is before they read about the effect of removing the literature base of society.
Part One is titled, "The Hearth and the Salamander." The opening paragraphs are arresting. The first of many motifs are introduced: the "great python" of the fire hose filled with kerosene, and the first reflection, "a minstrel man, burnt-corked in the mirror." Imagery is set in motion; the pictures Bradbury creates seem to move: "the house jumped up in a gorging fire" and 'The flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and the lawn of the house."
Montag is alone here. The reader's introduction to him is amid sparks and flames and ashes. This is an interesting use of words to contradict ideas; the sparks and flames Montag uses in the beginning are destructive, yet his interest in learning is sparked and ignited by Clarisse and fanned into flame by Faber. At the beginning of the novel his isolation is normal for him; for his society it is the triumph of the dehumanization process. This is the stasis. Bradbury's vision of the future is a bleak one in which people have been made numb to emotions because access to their feelings was cut off when their books were outlawed. In a place where it is illegal to read, people lose touch with feelings and even with memories. Without a written or oral tradition it is difficult to organize information. Helen Keller once wrote that she had few memories before she learned to communicate with Annie Sullivan because she had no language to which she could attach memories before that time. Removing this connection between people and generations speeds the dehumanization process.
When Montag and Clarisse reach her house she makes a reference to Bradbury's theme in his short story, "The Pedestrian," in which a man out for a walk is stopped by the only police car in the city, manned by robot police, and cited for walking. This was based on an incident Ray Bradbury himself experienced. While out walking one evening he was stopped by police and asked what he was doing. They didn't appreciate his answer: "Putting one foot in front of the other," and cited him. He ended up promising never to do it again.4 Clarisse compares her parents and uncle sitting around talking to being like a pedestrian.
What is most disconcerting to Montag is Clarisse's parting question, "Are you happy?" She disappears without waiting for an answer as though she wants him to ask himself. He is rankled by the question and cannot shake it. The next short section contains an avalanche of ideas: Montag's indignation that she would dare think he wasn't happy, the foreshadowing of what's behind the ventilator grille, how beautiful Clarisse's face was. "How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who refracted your own light on you?" He continues to think about how much larger than life she seemed and how she had almost seemed to be waiting for him.
However, these ruminations are cut short by Montag discovering his wife had overdosed. After the "paramedics" fix her up (they seem to be more like appliance repairmen) Montag sneaks across the yard to stand outside Clarisse's house. He knows there is something more, something he's been missing. He is on the path to self-discovery. After meeting Clarisse he remembers a meeting with a man in a park awhile ago. His work suffers. Bradbury employs a "watchdog," the Mechanical Hound of the firehouse. It takes a dislike to Montag. He becomes an alien in his workplace.
What is it that makes people human? In some societies, ostracism is the ultimate punishment. Here, people are isolating themselves from their feelings. In Francois Truffaut's film, Fahrenheit 451 (1966), the isolation is shown through people looking at their reflections in the windows on the train and stroking themselves, as if they were trying to remember something or reconnect with something lost.
What happens when people are deprived of this opportunity to connect? They drink, do drugs, drive too fast, and seek any kind of thrills. They use loud music and lots of colored lights flashing. Bradbury wrote this in 1953 before drive-bys, wall TVs, and the widespread use of street drugs. He was warning us of the possibility of dehumanization.
Dehumanization has been practiced throughout history, most recently with the slaves in this country and later with the Holocaust Jews. The process was methodical and effective. Removing rights, family ties, and geographical ties from both groups, denying the Jews access to any pleasurable or instructive pursuits, stripping them of their identities through numbering, shaving their heads, and exchanging their clothing-all these things were an attempt to dehumanize. What advantages the Jews had were their previous education and strong religious beliefs while the slaves had their religion and the hope of being reunited with lost family members. Bradbury uses the character Faber to state flat out to Montag what is vital to living a real life:
Number one: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the other two.
Without these elements people can be led easily–slaves, Jews in Europe, citizens in Bradbury's society: "let each one go to his door" citizens are instructed. Truffaut showed this eerie phenomenon. And how very few people disobeyed! Yet is it the few who remained human that the future generations have to thank; those slaves who learned to read on the sly, who escaped to the North, who regained lost family members; Jews in the camps who remained strong in their faith and forged relationships with others; and, in Fahrenheit 451, characters like Clarisse who continued to question and embrace life; the young and less afraid. Then there was Faber, older and fearful, who had such a wealth of knowledge to sustain him and a tenuous relationship with such a few other older intellectuals. His flight to his friend in St. Louis was his salvation at the end of the book.
Where is that spark and how is it extinguished or coaxed into flame? With Montag it was Clarisse who was the igniter, but he had to have been ready to be receptive. He was, since Bradbury tells the reader that he'd sensed something: "The air seemed charged with a special calm as if someone had waited there, quietly, and only a moment before he came, simply turned to a shadow and let him through." This is the point to attack the students and ask them; has your spark been ignited or has your desire for knowledge been extinguished? How does this happen and why? Why, in today's world, do people allow their innate curiosity to die out? Ask the kids this. I think Bradbury knew that too much saturation of sound and swirling lights would deaden one's ability to connect thoughts in a meaningful way. Once you get out of the habit of thinking, it becomes much easier to let the music and lights fill up that space in your mind and just drift along with the current. Ask the kids why so many of them don't want to read; don't want to know things, why things they might read about are so unimportant to them.
Is today's world an accurate realization of what Bradbury predicted: drive-bys, "wilding," preoccupation with electronic music and toys? Some kids will tell you they can't study without music playing. Ask them. Clarisse tells Montag that she listens to people talking and they don't say anything. Ask your students how many of them ever spend time in their rooms or outside without music, TV, or a video game. Assign them an activity that requires this. Also assign an activity that requires listening to a conversation between two people in a public place such as in line at a store or waiting for the bus. Have them listen to the inanity of this discourse. Then talk about it in class. They will be amazed at what they hear.
Soon after this encounter with Clarisse, Montag asks his wife Mildred how they met. Neither one of them remembers. She is unbothered but Montag is shaken.
The enormity of what is happening comes to a climax at the end of the first section. First, Montag meets the woman who would rather burn with her books than give them up. This makes him physically ill and he reasons that something must be in those books to make a person prefer to die than live without them. He tells his wife that a man spends time writing what he has thought about and he, Montag, burns it up in a flash. This hearkens back to Cleopatra and the burning of the library at Alexandria. She rages at Caesar, telling him that no one has a right to destroy another man's thoughts. Beatty, no fool, has seen Montag's crisis coming; he visits Montag to caution him. Here is where Bradbury's warning is clear. Beatty's philosophy is one of benevolent censorship. He tells Montag that people are unhappy if they think too much or if they think that others are happier than they are. He says they must burn Little Black Sambo because it offends black people and burn Uncle Tom's Cabin because it makes white people uncomfortable. "The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy." He recounts how everything had become so censored and plain vanilla that people lost interest in reading and became happier: "The mind drinks less and less." The government's attempts to· appease separate interest groups and minorities made everything bland and uninteresting: "We must all be alike. Not everyone born equal, like the Constitution says, but everyone made equal." To further this horrific possibility, Kurt Vonnegut gave us the short story "Harrison Bergeron," in which handicaps, like weights are assigned to people to make them more alike.
Beatty's explanation of such anomalies as Clarisse is that she was an odd duck, an embarrassment who didn't want to know how to do something, she wanted to know why. "The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until we're practically snatching them from the cradle." This is a frightening thought in today's world where teachers blame the home environment for their students' lack of school readiness and apathy toward study.
Part One ends with Montag confessing to Mildred that he has books and his plea to her to read with him for 24 hours to see if there's anything in them. After that, he promises, if there's nothing worthwhile, he'll burn them. And so they read away the afternoon with the three walls of the TV dark.
It is interesting that in this society people can read. There are firehouse rules and signs and directions. When Truffaut made the film everything was in pictograms— the newspaper comics— all of it, and the film credits were spoken, but in Bradbury's original, people can read but they only read the blandest of directions and perhaps short notes, lists, rules, and television scripts which have no substance. How, then, is it that Montag can read with such understanding? We must believe that as recently as fifteen years earlier reading was still taught. If this is so, there must have been a great number of people who easily slipped into the non-thinking lifestyle of non-reading. We know there are many who defy the law because firemen are still needed. That Montag can read Dickens and understand it shows that his intellect is no longer dormant. Thanks to Clarisse, now gone, Montag has been reawakened. In Part Two, the fact that Montag can read "Dover Beach" and bring Mildred's friend Helen to tears shows that all emotion is not dead; it is dormant, and the human race is still salvageable.
At the beginning of Part Two, 'The Sieve and the Sand," Montag dredges up a childhood memory of trying to fill a sieve with sand to get a dime from his cousin. Now he is trying to keep what he has read from sifting away from his consciousness. With Clarisse dead and Mildred suspicious of him, Montag must find another person with whom to connect. It is at this point he remembers Faber, the old man in the park he met a year before. He calls Faber who hangs up on him, fearful. Millie's friends are coming over to watch the White Clown and he leaves to find Faber. On the train he tries to think but the chanting of the advertisements effectively disrupts his thought patterns.
His plan is to get books printed again. Faber is weary and doesn't want to hear it. Then Montag makes his desperate move; he begins tearing pages from the Bible he's carrying. That conquers Faber and they agree to work on a plan. Faber gives Montag a ''bug" so they can talk back and forth to one another. Faber will be Montag's guiding voice, his angel. Upon returning home, Montag has to face Millie's inane friends who have come to sip martinis and watch the White Clown. Then Montag makes a daring and reckless move. He reads to them.
Is this the action of a coward or a fool? It is difficult to say, but Montag is in a manic state. He switches off the White Clown and announces the night's entertainment. What he chooses is "Dover Beach," Matthew Arnold's poem about the "crisis of faith" in the mid Victorian world". 5 War is looming in Montag's world but the citizens are barely aware. As Millie's friend says, "It's always somebody else's husband dies, they say." Montag reads of the failure of culture and Millie's friend Helen weeps. It is probably the first honest emotion she has experienced in her memory. Faber hisses in Montag's ear to stop but Montag can't stop. The women all leave immediately and Montag sees the result of his actions: "'I made them unhappier than they've been in years, I think, said Montag. 'It shocked me to see Mrs. Phelps cry.'"
Back at the firehouse Montag hands over a book to Beatty who teases him about book knowledge by quoting book after book, trying to convince Montag that they contradict each other and that's why they are no good. Fortunately, Faber says in Montag's ear, he's trying to confuse you. You've heard him, now hear me, then think for yourself.
This is when I stop and ask the students if they should believe everything I tell them. Then I ask them whether they should think about what I tell them and what other people tell them and what they read. They don't answer right away. They think first. I tease them by saying how cruel and unusual a punishment I inflict on them daily by asking them to think!
Faber's final caution here is this: "But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority." And then Beatty's piece de resistance comes at the close of Part Two. They answer a fire alarm and Montag is shocked: "Why," Montag said slowly, "we've stopped in front of my house."
Part Three is entitled "Burning Bright." It opens with Montag's house in flames, Mildred hurrying to a taxi and Beatty smirking at Montag. Montag is no longer dehumanized; he has been resurrected first by Clarisse and then by Faber. As the transformation has taken shape, Montag has found himself distanced from Beatty and all the firehouse represents and from Mildred and his "home" life. Thus, his isolation from everything in his former life is complete. The instability is at its zenith.
This begins the journey, both real and metaphorical, to the new stasis. Montag literally bums his bridges behind him. After realizing that Mildred called in the alarm, Montag knows that the last thread holding him in place has snapped. Then Beatty taunts him by telling him what fire can do and what it can do to him: "A problem gets too burdensome, then into the fire with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, and nothing to rot later." But Montag senses that the wind may change; he need not be Beatty's victim. His link to Faber, the "bug" in his ear falls out and Beatty snatches it up, promising to track down the voice on the other end. Montag makes his crisis decision. He aims the flame thrower at Beatty. Beatty only quotes more literature to Montag, and Montag engulfs him in flame.
After knocking out the other two firemen, Stoneman (aptly named as a man without thought) and Black (like the ashes of the books they burned), Montag ignites the Hound, but not before he is stung by it. With one leg numbed, Montag drags himself into his back yard where he retrieves books to plant in the other firemen's houses. It strikes him that Beatty wanted to die but somehow couldn't until the moment came when he could taunt Montag into immolating him.
Without the radio connection to Faber Montag has simply to get to Faber's house. They have a whiskey, and Montag exchanges his cash for Faber's old clothes. He escapes into nature knowing Faber is taking a bus to St. Louis. Now everything is in flux. No one is where they belonged for so long. Defying the law makes one a fugitive. Ask you students if it is ever okay to defy the law? How can one tell and how can one go about it? The novel is a projection of an extreme in society. Today we are not so close to the edge. Granted, we are fifty years closer to Bradbury's predictions, but will our society end up like that in the novel? Ask your kids what they think; you should hear a good argument. What was Bradbury trying to convey and how did he do accurately predict so many items and events?
The novel ends on a hopeful note. While the city is decimated by a single bomb reducing it to ashes, Montag is alive with the Book People, led by a man called Granger. These men are all books; that is to say each of them has memorized a book and then burnt it to avoid breaking the law. (In the film Truffaut added women and children to this group.) They live simply, reciting themselves for each other, aware of other small pockets of people in other rural areas. The law cannot touch them.
And so a new beginning has dawned with the early morning. The new stasis is established in the face of the ashes of the city. Granger even relates the story of the phoenix to Montag. Montag is ready to go on, feeling a little sad about Millie, and hoping that Faber got out in time. He will go with the Book People and help to rebuild. Granger says society will learn from these mistakes. What's the lesson here? If we are aware enough can we keep the government from passing laws removing our rights? What must we do to stay aware? At this point the kids should realize the value of knowing things. Ask the kids and sparks will rise.
Bradbury wrote an afterword in the 1979 edition (Random House) in which he addressed all the people who wanted him to make changes in his work. Some wanted more women added, some wanted specific references removed. His response was that his work was his work and that he wasn't going to sugar-coat or water down any of it to appease any minority group. In his opinion somebody is going to be offended no matter what you do, so preserve the integrity of your work and don't allow compromises.
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