Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451

If you could ask an American about their vote in the US elections, what would you ask?

Captain Beatty's Speech

Takes notes when watching the clip - it's full of useful words and phrases and explains the novel to you

What kind of topics would work well in a dystopian work based on our time?

p. 55

00:49

What is under fire in Fahrenheit 451 according to the clip?

04:23

How is 'society implicit in its own combustion?' (i.e. how is society partially to blame for what happened, according to Beatty's speech?)

The Restorative Power of Nature

"The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests

and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I’ll show you my collection some day.”

“Good.”

“They want to know what I do with all my time. I tell them that sometimes I

just sit and think. But I won’t tell them what. I’ve got them running. And

sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in

my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?"

Technology filled urban world 

The wild and natural world 

Prefontal cortex -> critical thinking /problem solving / decision making / impulse control / strategic planning

Multitasking leads to fatigue in brain 

Nature's ability to be a restorative tool 

Link to Clarisse and Mildred

A tool of manipulation  / indoctrination 

Where else do we see manipulation?

p. 48

The Mechanical Hound

Close Reading

+ draw it 

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a

minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the

fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that

smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

------------------------

He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for

how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were

more often—he searched for a simile, found one in his work—torches, blazing

away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and

throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?

Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real

and ten thousand imaginary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered

their eyes. These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as

they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and sootcolored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but

their heritage showed. Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever seen a

fireman that didn’t have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel

shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror images of himself! Were all

firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? The color of

cinders and ash about them, and the continual smell of burning from their pipes.

Writing Journal Task

Write a diary entry based on part 1 of the novel. Choose between these two options. 

1. Written from Montag's perspective in which he looks back on what happened in the past couple of days. It is supposed to show the start of his enlightened state / transformation and the factors that played a role in it. Include some sort of idea at the end of his final thoughts about the future.

2. Written from Mildred's perspective. It is supposed to show her outlook on life and the most important scenes that she was part of it should be commented on by her. Include some sort of idea at the end of his final thoughts about the future.