Part One, Reading 1 · The Hearth and the Salamander

Fahrenheit 451

Pathfinders · 7th–9th

Copywork

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. 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. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.

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?

Read both passages aloud, one after the other. Which one sounds more like the real Montag?

For the educator Two passages; copy them as shown. The first is the book’s opening, and it holds the vocabulary word “stolid”. Its first two sentences are short and both begin “It was”. The next two are long, and each opens with a phrase that starts “With”, so the reader waits for the subject; the third piles a second “with” phrase on the first before the blood ever pounds. Point out the pictures: the hose is a “python”, and Montag’s hands are a “conductor” playing “symphonies”. The second passage comes after the walk, when Montag stands in his hall and looks at a blank wall. It holds “refracted”, “simile” and “innermost”. Its second sentence has no verb at all. Its third opens with one word and a colon. A pair of dashes (the book’s own) lets Montag interrupt himself to look for a comparison, and he finds one “in his work”. Two of its five sentences are questions he asks himself and does not answer. For imitation, have the student read a passage twice, set it aside, rebuild it from memory, and then compare. The talk prompt has no single answer. One student will say the opening is the real Montag, since it is his work and his joy; another will say the voice in the hall is, since there he is talking to himself. Let them disagree; the last written question will come back to it.

Discussion

Narration Tell the night back in order, from the burning house to Montag’s whisper into the phone. Then say which moment Bradbury most wants you to remember, and how he makes it stay with you.

1. Read the first paragraph again. Did you enjoy the fire, even a little? What in the writing made you feel that way?Tone

2. Montag’s smile “never ever went away.” Does he wear that smile, or does it wear him?Character

3. Clarisse bets Montag that there is dew on the grass in the morning. It annoys him. Why would dew annoy a grown man?Inference

4. In the hall, Montag thinks most people are like torches. Clarisse’s face is like a mirror. Which one is Montag?Theme

5. Bradbury writes, “The room was not empty.” A few lines later he writes, “The room was indeed empty.” Mildred is there both times. How can both be true?Author's choice

Make a Connection Clarisse says drivers going fast see only “a green blur” where there is grass. Think of a place you pass every day without really looking. Go there slowly once. What had you missed, and how did it feel to find it?

Vocabulary

stolid With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black.Solid and slow to feel; not easily stirred or troubled. Under the helmet, Montag’s head is steady, and not much reaches it.

refracted Impossible: for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you?Bent light and sent it on. Montag means that Clarisse’s face catches his own look and gives it back to him.

simile People were more often—he searched for a simile, found one in his work—torches, blazing away until they whiffed out.A comparison of one thing to a very different thing, often using like or as. Montag looks for one and finds it in his job.

innermost How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?Furthest inside; most private and hidden.

peculiar Oh, we’re most peculiar.Odd; not like other people. Clarisse says it of her own family, and she sounds almost proud.

subconscious “What?” asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience.The part of the mind that works below what a person knows they are thinking. Montag calls his an idiot that babbles on without his say.

mausoleum It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set.A large stone building that holds a tomb. Montag’s bedroom feels like one: cold, dark and shut tight.

pulverized He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the earth would be thought as he stood shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on moving and moving.Crushed into powder or dust.

Critical thinking

1. Clarisse tells Montag, “You laugh when I haven’t been funny and you answer right off.” Was that a kind thing to say to him?

2. Montag laughs off Clarisse’s question, “Are you happy?”, and minutes later tells himself he is not. Did she show him something he already knew, or put the doubt in his head?