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Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander

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• Why is it illegal to drive slowly? (p.9)

• How does Montag react to the question “Are you happy?” (p. 10) Is he happy? Why is his reaction so peculiar?

• The way the operator talks/behaves/reacts, suicide seems like a common occurrence…(p. 15-6)

• Montag takes pills to fall asleep—this seems to be a nightly/ common ritual (p.18)

• Montag has a peculiar reaction to his wife’s suicide attempt; there is no emotion—it is decidedly neutral /mechanical …disappointed? (p.20) Explain what is peculiar about Montag’s reaction to his wife’s suicide attempt.

• In debt to pay for multiple TV’s (p.20)—each costs a third of his annual salary of 6000$

• Clarisse rubs a flower on Montag’s chin and reveals that he’s not in love with anyone, which makes sense if you consider his marriage…(p.22) His reaction to this is defensive and disconcerted.

• Clarisse has been sent to a psychiatrist (seemingly) because she likes hiking, nature and thinking (p.23)

• Montag cannot believe that Clarisse (16) is younger than his wife (30)—why? (p.23) Clarisse is more mature in what regards?

• Clarisse says “No one has time any more for anyone else,” (p.23)—but Montag does, he has time for Clarisse. Starting to seem that Montag is secretly like Clarisse; he looks at the world, observes, thinks, listens…

• Clarisse observes that Montag is not an average Fireman and offers insight into what the traits of the typical Fireman must be (p.23-4):

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-Montag actually makes eye contact when talking

-Montag is willing to look at the moon when Clarisse refers to it

-Montag is actually willing to talk to Clarisse and not just walk away

-Montag does not threaten Clarisse for thinking and talking and engaging with nature

-Montag is willing to offer/give some of his time—a priceless commodity in a rushed society where nobody has time for anyone or anything

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• Thus, as a Fireman, Montag is Strange/Atypical…

• Mechanical Hound, “At once living and dead,” is an interesting metaphor for life in this book (p.24)

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• Entertainment= watching a fake creature (Mechanical Hound) kill real creatures (rats, chickens, etc.) for fun. Life/ Nature have no value (p.25)

• Montag questions if the Mechanical Hound/ Robotic Dog is capable of individual thoughts/ decisions/ preferences/ personality traits and individuality apart from the tasks and deeds it is programmed exhibit (p.26-8)

• Just the fact that the Mechanical Hound treats Montag differently seems to reveal preference; it only lashes out at him.

• Montag feels paternalistically for Clarisse (p.28)

• Clarisse tells Montag, “You always seem shocked,” (p.29)—Why is she so shocking to him? Is it because she is so much like him—only fearlessly so & at such a young age? Especially in light of the consequences…

• Clarisse complains to Montag about what she feels are the problems with the education system (p.29-30):

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-People are brought together and they’re not allowed to talk

-Lengthy classes on a variety of topics, but nobody asks questions

-‘Answers’ are simply recited to students without dialogue

-Students are so drained by the end of the day that they flee to bed or unleash their pent -up destructive urges at the Fun Park where they bully, destroy windows, cars, etc.

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• Clarisse: “I’m afraid of children my own age. They Kill each other,” (p.30)

• Clarisse: “People don’t talk about anything,” (p.31)

• Clarisse is inexplicably gone and everything seems to be empty (p.32)

• Montag is burdened by guilt, but why? (p.33)

• Montag expresses empathy to his co-worker, Beatty, and ends up shocking him. Montag feels bad for a guy (he goes mad, ends up in an asylum) whose illegal book collection/library is destroyed:

• His reaction shocks Beatty

• Montag seems to reveal that he took a book of Fairy Tales from an illegal library when he uses the phrase ‘Once upon a time…’

• Montag is influenced by Clarisse—he too is now asking questions, like did Firemen always create fires, or did they once extinguish them in the past? He seems to be questioning his PURPOSE (p.34)

• By the end of this scene a woman chooses to go up in flames and die with her book collection (p.39) Thus this death is symbolic; the woman believes that ideas, knowledge, intellectual curiosity and freedom are worth dying for—and without these things as part of her existence, life isn’t worth living.

• The other Firemen, apart from Montag, have literally no reaction to the fact that they’ve just needlessly ended a life and essentially committed a murder. Yet another commentary on this society’s (in the novel) feelings about any and all life forms: When Mildred attempts suicide, When the Mechanical Hounds hunt and kill small creatures for sport, When a woman is incinerated, all of these demonstrate a total disregard and detachment from the value of life—NOBODY MATTERS.

• Mildred can’t remember how or when she met Montag (p.43)—What does this say about their relationship? Do they love each other? Is there any bond/intimacy/attachment at all?

• Montag is certain that he would not have cried had Mildred successfully killed herself (p.44)

• Montag, as he continues to question life, seemingly for the first time (in a long time or maybe ever), wonders, “How do you get so empty? (...)Who takes it out of you?” (p.44) Thus we begin to see how he feels about the state of his life and of his society; it’s empty, it sucks the life out of you, essentially rendering you a shell. What is the “it” he feels is stripped from him by his society?

• Explain how starting to ask questions marks a change/ evolution in Montag.

• Clarisse and her family are gone (p.47). According to Mildred, what may have happened to Clarisse? How would you describe her reaction to Clarisse’s possible death?

• Montag assumes the Mechanical Hound is outside of his house late at night as he is lying in bed (p.48). Is he being paranoid or is this a logical suspicion?

• Mildred refuses to turn off the TV EVER (p.49), despite her husband being unwell. Refers to the characters on screen as her ‘Family’.

• Montag claims to be sick (p.49), is he really? Why might he no longer want to go to work? (Hint: explain how the fiery death of the woman with the book collection changed Montag) 

• Mildred has no reaction at all to Montag’s news that a lady was incinerated/ burned alive with her book collection (p.49-50)

• Mildred believes that the incinerated woman deserved her fate and says, “I hate her,” (p.51)

• Why does Mildred ‘hate’ the woman who was incinerated along with her book collection?

• Montag says, “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house…You don’t stay for nothing,” (p.51)

• “This fire’ll last me the rest of my life. God! I’ve been trying to put it out, in my mind, all night,” (p. 51) 

• Montag asks Mildred how long it’s been ‘since she was bothered’ (p.52). I would argue that you can replace the word ‘bothered’ with ‘cared’. It seems that the world in this novel is preoccupied with preventing thought and engagement; hence nobody is aware enough to be bothered by anything.

• Beatty explains to Montag that books disappeared initially due to public demand, not because of tyrannical governmental policies (p.57-8). Written materials that continue to be allowed and exist include:

          -Comic Books

          -3D Pornography

          -Confessions (Tabloids)

          -Trade Journals

 

Why are the above written materials actually allowed in the society of this novel?

Why are these acceptable written materials? Because Porn & Gossip alienate people, they encourage judgment; they objectify and reduce entire lives to a few salacious bullet points. Trade Journals, on the other hand, exist solely to help people become better at their jobs, while comics provide shallow, escapist fantastical scenarios…

• “…the word ‘intellectual’…became the swear word it deserved to be,” (p.58). Intellectuality becomes profane in a thoughtless society.

• Beatty explains that, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of the other; then all are happy…” (p.58). Thus everyone in this society becomes equal and united in their ignorance and due to their strict adherence to policies that cultivate and enforce illiteracy and thoughtlessness.

• Beatty: “A book is a loaded gun…” (p.58)

• The role of Firemen was redefined so it became a “new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior: official censors, judges, and executors,” (p.58-9)

• “…People want to be happy…Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun? That’s all we live for, isn’t it?”(p.59)

• Funerals no longer exist/happen simply because they make people sad (p.59-60)

• Once people die, “Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean,” (p.60)

• Beatty describes in-depth that society is plagued by ‘odd ducks’, ‘outsiders’, whom the government has been cleansing out of existence for years (p.60). This is entirely akin to the holocaust, only instead of a religious group being eliminated, it’s anybody, regardless of race, gender, age (etc) who continues to think, read, engage, etc. Essentially this is a  form of anti-intellectual Eugenics (a science that tries to improve the human race by controlling which people become parents)

• According to Beatty, Clarisse “was a time bomb…she didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why…You ask a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy…The poor  girl’s better off dead,” (p. 60)

• “We’ve lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we’re nearly snatching them from the cradle,” (p.60)

Beatty: “If you don’t want an unhappy man politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none,” (p.61)

• Beatty says of the Firemen, “We’re the Happiness Boys,” (p.61)

• Montag decides that he’ll never go in to work as a Fireman again (p.63). Why? What has triggered this decision?

• “I’ve got an awful feeling that I want to smash things and kill things,” (p.64). This is becoming an increasingly common sentiment throughout the novel. This so-called happy future society is full of people who want to destroy and kill things for pleasure in order to release/ vent their anger. In response to this statement, Mildred suggests to Montag that he take the car out, drive dangerously fast and run over dogs and rabbits like she does in order to release rage.

• Montag says that he is full of anger, but he wants to hold on to it (p.64). Why is that? Why does he seem to value and appreciate this anger?

• Montag says that he may start reading books and is fine with being sent to jail over it (p.64-5)

• Montag shares his secret book collection with Mildred (p.65-6)

• Montag pleads with Mildred to give him some time to try reading books to confirm for himself if Beatty’s claims about books are true (p.66-7)—which is to say , are books just full of nonsense that only creates trouble or do they have a value?

• Do you think Millie will support and join Montag on his quest to read? Anticipate what will happen and justify your stance by examining her character traits.

• Montag says, “Maybe it would be best if Firemen themselves were burnt,” (p.67)