Bradbury: text and questions

 

This extract is taken from Chapter I – The Hearth and the Salamander. Guy Montag, the main character, is meeting for the first time his new neighbour, Clarisse McClellan.

 

 

They walked on again in silence and finally she said, thoughtfully, “You know, I’m not afraid of you at all.”

He was surprised. “Why should you be?”

“So many people are. Afraid of firemen, I mean. But you’re just a man, after all...”

He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon...

And then Clarisse McClellan said:

“Do you mind if I ask? How long’ve you worked at being a fireman?”

“Since I was twenty, ten years ago.”

“Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”

He laughed.“That’s against the law!”

“Oh. Of course.”

“It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”

They walked still further and the girl said, “Is it true that long ago firemen put fires out instead of going to start them?”

“No. Houses have always been fireproof, take my word for it.”

“Strange. I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.”

He laughed.

She glanced quickly over. “Why are you laughing?”

“I don’t know.” He started to laugh again and stopped. “Why?”

“You laugh when I haven’t been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I’ve asked you.”

He stopped walking. “You are an odd one,” he said, looking at her. “Haven’t you any respect?”

“I don’t mean to be insulting. It’s just I love to watch people too much, I guess.”

“Well, doesn’t this mean anything to you?” He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char-colored sleeve.

“Yes,” she whispered. She increased her pace. “Have you ever watched the jet cars racing on the boulevards down that way?”

“You’re changing the subject!”

“I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly,” she said. “If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur? That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?” “You think too many things,” said Montag, uneasily.

“I rarely watch the ‘parlor walls’ or go to races or Fun Parks. So I’ve lots of time for crazy thoughts, I guess. Have you seen the two-hundred-foot-long billboards in the country beyond town? Did you know that once billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last.”

“I didn’t know that!” Montag laughed abruptly.

“Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.”

He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable.

“And if you look”—she nodded at the sky—“there’s a man in the moon.”

He hadn’t looked for a long time.

 

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953

Read the extract from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

 

 

1)    What sort of novel is it? Justify.

 

 

 

2)    What do you learn about Montag’s job? The way people see his job?

 

 

 

3)    Who are the people mentioned line 20?

 

 

 

 

4)    Focus on the dialogue: what do you learn about the characters? Compare them.

 

 

 

 

5)    Find elements which prove that Montag is starting to question himself.

 

 

 

 

6)    Why are books banned?

 

 

 

 

 

 

7)    According to you, what does Fahrenheit 451 refer to?

 

 

 

 

 

8)    What do you know about the author?