Part Three, Reading 4 · Burning Bright

Fahrenheit 451

Pathfinders · 7th–9th

Copywork

It was not burning; it was warming! He saw many hands held to its warmth, hands without arms, hidden in darkness. Above the hands, motionless faces that were only moved and tossed and flickered with firelight. He hadn’t known fire could look this way. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take.

We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good. We are model citizens, in our own special way; we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and the city people let us be. We’re stopped and searched occasionally, but there’s nothing on our persons to incriminate us. The organization is flexible, very loose, and fragmentary.

Read both passages aloud. What is hidden in each one?

For the educator Two passages; copy them as shown. The first is Montag seeing the camp fire from cover; the second is Granger, late in the reading, telling Montag how the men live. The first opens on a short sentence that turns on a semicolon and corrects itself: “It was not burning; it was warming!” Then comes a picture in two parts, the hands first and then the faces above them. The third sentence has no main verb; have the student copy it as it stands, without fixing it. It ends on three verbs joined by “and”: “moved and tossed and flickered”. The passage closes on two plain sentences that say what Montag had not known. The second opens on a short sentence that ends on one small word, “yet”. The next begins with “For”, meaning because, and gives the reason. Then a long sentence turns on a semicolon into three things the men do, “we walk the old tracks, we lie in the hills at night, and the city people let us be.” Then a sentence that turns on “but”, and a last short one that ends on three describing words, the longest last. Have the student copy “hadn’t”, “We’re” (twice) and “there’s” with their apostrophes. 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 for each passage. In the first, some students will say the men are hidden: “hands without arms, hidden in darkness”, faces seen only by firelight. Others will say Montag is hidden, watching from cover. In the second, some will say the books are hidden, kept where a search finds “nothing on our persons”. Others will say the men’s plans are hidden, in that last word “yet”, or the men themselves, passing as “model citizens”. Once they have answered, ask which words do the hiding. Do not say whether a book kept in people is the same book; the last written question asks the student to judge it.

Discussion

Narration Tell the reading back in order, from the shape in the dark to the fire going out. Then say where Montag stops being afraid, if he ever does, and point to the words that show it.

1. Out in the wild, Montag smells pickles, mustard and “parsley on the table at home”. Why does Bradbury make the wild land smell like a kitchen?Author's choice

2. On the old track, Montag is suddenly sure that “Once, long ago, Clarisse had walked here”. What is he really sure of?Inference

3. When Montag first sees the fire far ahead, he is afraid he “might blow the fire out with a single breath”. Why is a fireman afraid for a fire?Theme

4. Montag cries out and turns away from the dark screen, but the men around the fire sit with “their faces expressionless”. What’s going on behind those faces?Character

5. When Granger says “We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”, everyone laughs quietly. What is the joke?Tone

Make a Connection Think of something you know by heart, like a song, a poem or a family story. How would you know if a word of it had slipped?

Vocabulary

cadence The voices talked of everything, there was nothing they could not talk about, he knew from the very cadence and motion and continual stir of curiosity and wonder in them.The rise and fall of a voice as it speaks, its beat and its music, apart from the words. Montag cannot hear what the men say, only how they say it.

fragmentary The organization is flexible, very loose, and fragmentary.Made of separate pieces that are not joined into one whole. Granger’s network has no centre that could be found and destroyed all at once.

incite We’re not out to incite or anger anyone yet.To stir people up so that they act, often in anger or by force. Granger says his men are not trying to start anything.

insomnia Don’t think the police don’t know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia.Trouble falling asleep or staying asleep. Granger guesses that the man the police pick out walks in the early morning, either for pleasure or because he cannot sleep.

pedant The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves was that we were not important, we mustn’t be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world.A person who shows off what they know, or fusses over small points of learning, and looks down on those who know less. Granger’s men must not become pedants.

Critical thinking

1. Moments after a stranger is seized in his place, Granger touches Montag’s arm and says, “Welcome back from the dead.” Who paid for Montag to come back?

2. Granger tells Montag, “See how important you’ve become in the last minute!” What has become important?

3. Granger's men burn each book once they have it by heart. Is a book kept only in a person's memory still the same book?