Fahrenheit 451

Part One, Reading 4

The Hearth and the Salamander

Ray Bradbury · Pathfinders 7th–9th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.

Mildred stood over his bed, curiously. He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. He could remember her no other way.

Read both passages aloud. In the first, Montag’s eyes are hungry to look at everything. In the second, how does he look at Mildred?

For the educator Two passages; copy them as shown. The first comes from the opening, as Montag undresses in the dark with the stolen book. Sentence by sentence the feeling climbs his body, from hands to arms to shoulders and at last to his eyes. Its second sentence runs on with “and” and “and then” and ends on a comparison, “like a spark leaping a gap.” Then comes a sentence of four words that holds the vocabulary word “ravenous”, and a last sentence that ends on three words, each bigger than the one before: “something, anything, everything.” Point out the hyphens in “jump-over” and “shoulder-blade”. The second passage comes at noon the next day, as Mildred stands over his bed. Its long middle sentence is the model: after “he saw her without opening his eyes” it lists five parts of her, one after another, set off by commas, with “and” only before the last. It holds the vocabulary word “cataract”. A short sentence closes it. 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. Students may notice that he looks at her with his eyes shut, that she is seen as a list of parts, or that “He could remember her no other way.” Let them find these for themselves; do not name them first. Some students will find the second passage unkind to Mildred. Ask whether the unkindness is in her or in the way Montag sees, and leave it open; do not make her shallow and nothing more.

Discussion

Narration Tell the reading back from the dark bedroom to the moment Montag turns away. Then choose the place where the house is loudest, and say how Bradbury’s writing makes it loud.

In the dark, Mildred feels Montag’s wet cheek. She never says a word about his tears. Why not? Character
Montag cannot think what to say to Mildred. Then he asks her where they first met. What does he hope to find out? Inference
The thunder fades and the music dies. “There,” Mildred tells him. What has the parlour done for her? Theme
Mildred thinks Clarisse may be dead. Montag answers, “We couldn’t be talking about the same girl.” Why does he answer like that? Character
Mildred goes out to turn the parlour down. She does nothing to it and asks, “Is that better?” He says, “Thanks.” What is he thanking her for? Tone

Make a Connection Montag says we need “to be really bothered once in a while.” Think of a time, in your own life or in another story, when someone was bothered by something important. Was it worth the trouble it caused?

Vocabulary

ravenous: His hands were ravenous. Wildly hungry, so hungry you would grab at anything. Montag’s hands, which have just stolen a book, seem hungry for more.
For the educator Read the next sentence too: his eyes are “beginning to feel hunger.” Set it beside the second copywork passage, where Mildred’s eyes have “a kind of cataract”: one of them is hungry to see, and one, Montag thinks, cannot.
jargon: She talked to him for what seemed a long while and she talked about this and she talked about that and it was only words, like the words he had heard once in a nursery at a friend’s house, a two-year-old child building word patterns, talking jargon, making pretty sounds in the air. Talk that makes sounds but carries no meaning for the listener. To Montag, Mildred’s talk in the dark sounds like a two-year-old making pretty noises.
For the educator Today the word usually means the special words of a trade that outsiders cannot follow, like doctors’ jargon. Bradbury uses the older sense, meaningless chatter. Ask the student whether it is fair to Mildred.
gibbering: And the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the nephews, that lived in those walls, the gibbering pack of tree-apes that said nothing, nothing, nothing and said it loud, loud, loud. Chattering fast and making no sense, more noise than speech. Montag calls the people in the parlour walls a pack of apes that talk loudly and say nothing.
For the educator Compare “jargon” earlier in the reading: both are talk without meaning. The word sounds like what it means; say it aloud. Ask whose talk in this reading is gibbering, and whose is not.
cacophony: You drowned in music and pure cacophony. A harsh, jangling mix of loud sounds. The parlour’s music is so loud that Montag feels his bones almost shaken loose.
For the educator From Greek kakos, bad, and phone, sound. The same phone is in telephone and symphony, which means sounds that go well together. It is also in the reading’s own “phono-colour walls,” where the cacophony comes from.
cataract: He felt her there, he saw her without opening his eyes, her hair burnt by chemicals to a brittle straw, her eyes with a kind of cataract unseen but suspect far behind the pupils, the reddened pouting lips, the body as thin as a praying mantis from dieting, and her flesh like white bacon. A cloudy patch that grows over the lens of the eye and blurs sight. Montag imagines one hidden behind Mildred’s eyes, as if she cannot quite see.
For the educator Note “unseen but suspect”: it is Montag’s guess, and he makes it with his own eyes shut. The word also means a great waterfall; ask the student which meaning fits, and whether the parlour’s waterfall passage fits too.
feigning: A child feigning illness, afraid to call because after a moment’s discussion, the conversation would run so: “Yes, Captain, I feel better already. Pretending to have a feeling or a sickness you do not really have. Montag fears he would sound like a youngster faking sickness, though the reading says he has chills and fever.
For the educator Related to “fiction” and to “feint,” a fake move in a game. Ask whether Montag is feigning anything, and what he admits to himself he is afraid of.
radical: Wasn’t he a radical? Someone who wants to change things at the roots, often in a way that alarms other people. Mildred uses it as a label for a writer she has never read.
For the educator From Latin radix, root; a radish is a root too. Mildred asks if he was one, and a moment later says, “He was a radical.” Ask where she could have learned that, and whether Montag knows any more.

Critical thinking

Mildred says he should have thought of that before he became a fireman. Montag asks, “Was I given a choice?” Was he?
Montag starts to cry at the thought that he would not cry if Mildred died. Is he grieving for her, or for himself?