Fahrenheit 451

Part Three, Reading 1

Burning Bright

Ray Bradbury · Pathfinders 7th–9th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you’re a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical.

And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either. Fire was best for everything!

Read both passages aloud. Which one sounds calmer?

For the educator Two passages; copy them as shown. The first is Beatty on Montag’s lawn, flicking his igniter. It begins partway into his speech and runs to its end, so it is printed without quotation marks. It ends on its shortest sentence. The second joins its two halves with only a comma and “then”: “too burdensome, then into the furnace with it.” The third sets off the listener’s name with commas, “Now, Montag,” the way we speak to someone. The fourth has three single words in a row, “clean, quick, sure”, then a semicolon before “nothing to rot later.” The fifth has no verb at all: three words, with the vocabulary word “aesthetic” in the middle. The second passage is Montag in his bedroom a few minutes later, once the beds are burning. Its first sentence runs on through commas: “it was good to burn,” then “he felt himself gush out in the fire,” then three verbs with no “and” between them, “snatch, rend, rip in half”, with the vocabulary word “rend” in the middle. Its second sentence turns on a comma and closes on “either.” Its third is five words and an exclamation mark. For imitation, have the student read a passage twice, set it aside, rebuild it from memory, and then compare. The talk prompt has more than one answer; ask which words make the passage sound that way. Many students will hear Beatty as calmer: short sentences, one-word lists, nothing hurried. Others will hear the bedroom grow calm at its end, once the problem is put away, and will hear a threat under Beatty’s calm, “you’re a burden.” Let them find this for themselves. The last written question brings together what these two passages say about fire, so keep this talk to how they sound.

Discussion

Narration Tell the reading back in order, from the lights coming on down the street to Montag lying by the tree with a numb leg. Then pick one place where Bradbury slows the action down, and say what he makes you notice there.

Beatty asks what good Clarisse ever did, and Montag says she “didn’t do anything to anyone.” What kind of good is that? Moral reasoning
After one blast at the books, Montag goes after the beds, the walls and the dishes, until a voice shouts, “The books, Montag!” What is he trying to burn? Inference
As Mildred runs past, Montag shouts, “Mildred, you didn’t put in the alarm!” When the house is down, he asks Beatty if she did. What has changed for him in between? Character
Before he knocks the two firemen down, Montag orders them to “Turn around!” Why make them turn their backs? Inference

Make a Connection Beatty says fire gets rid of a problem with “nothing to rot later.” Think of a problem, in your own life or in a story you know, that someone got rid of instead of solving. Was anything left over?

Vocabulary

perpetual: It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Going on forever, never stopping. Beatty calls fire perpetual motion: once started, it keeps itself going, and he says it would “burn our lifetimes out.”
For the educator From Latin perpetuus, unbroken; perpetuate is in the same family. Beatty takes the word back a little at once: “Or almost perpetual motion.” Ask why he corrects himself, and what in this reading keeps going after it should have stopped: the burning Hound, which “seemed to want to get back at him”.
aesthetic: Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical. Having to do with beauty and what is pleasing to look at. Beatty says burning is a clean, good-looking way to be rid of a problem.
For the educator From Greek aisthesis, feeling or sensing. Put an- (without) in front and you have anaesthetic, which takes feeling away: the root of “anaesthetized”, later in this list. Beatty sets the word between a medical word and a plain one. Ask what is beautiful, to Beatty, about a problem that leaves “nothing to rot later.”
rend: And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless problem. To tear something apart with force. Montag feels himself tearing his house to pieces with the flame.
For the educator An old word. Its past tense is rent, and it lives on in heart-rending, something so sad it seems to tear the heart. Bradbury sets it between “snatch” and “rip in half”, three ways of tearing in a row. Ask whether the three words sound like hard work or like pleasure, and point to “it was good to burn”.
valise: She shoved the valise in the waiting beetle, climbed in, and sat mumbling, “Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now…” A small travelling bag or suitcase. It is the one bag Mildred carries out of the house.
For the educator From French; an older, more formal word for suitcase. A few lines earlier Bradbury calls it a “suitcase”, held “with a dream-like clenching rigidity in her fist”. Ask what a person would pack in one bag on a night like this, and notice that the page never says what Mildred packed.
bewilderment: The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there, his knees half-bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand. Deep confusion: not knowing where you are or what is happening. Montag stands by the ashes of his house too lost to move.
For the educator Built on bewilder, which holds an old verb, wilder, to lead astray, as if into the wild. To be bewildered is to be lost. Bradbury puts it in a list of three joined by “and”, “tiredness and bewilderment and outrage”. Ask which of the three has won a few minutes later, when Beatty pockets the green bullet.
blanched: They turned, their faces like blanched meat, streaming sweat; he beat their heads, knocking off their helmets and bringing them down on themselves. Gone pale or white, as from fear. The two firemen’s faces have lost all their colour.
For the educator From French blanc, white, the root of blank. A cook blanches food by dipping it in boiling water until it goes pale. Ask what has turned the two firemen white, and why neither of them moves.
anaesthetized: He was afraid to get up, afraid he might not be able to gain his feet at all, with an anaesthetized leg. Made numb, so that it cannot feel. The Hound’s needle has taken the feeling out of Montag’s leg.
For the educator An- means without, and the Greek root means feeling: the same root as “aesthetic” in Beatty’s speech. The British spelling keeps the “ae”; American books print anesthetized. Ask what else in this reading has gone numb, starting on the first page, where Montag’s face “was entirely numb and featureless”.

Critical thinking

Beatty asks Montag, “Didn’t I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?” Yet he says fire will get rid of Montag “clean, quick, sure.” Why give a hint at all?
Montag’s only answer to Beatty’s dare is “We never burned right…” What would it have meant to burn right?
Beatty says the beauty of fire is that it “destroys responsibility and consequences.” When Montag turns the flamethrower on Beatty, is he breaking free of the firemen's way or still living by it?