English I Archives Week of September 27 - October 1, 2004

Friday, October 1, 2004
ENGLISH I (CP) GRADE 9, PERIODS 3 & 6

I. STUDY QUESTIONS: (F451, Pages 12-28) Due Today
II. Vocabulary / Lit. Term Quiz
III. Video - "Censorship"



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Thursday, September 30, 2004

English I CP (Grade 9) Periods 3 & 6

I. Journal Prompt: Fahrenheit 451 contains a number
of religious references. Do you feel that religion in modern day society
is doing more good than bad? Should religion and government be mixed?
Is it unwise to combined the two?

II. F451 Character Comparison chart due

III. Review for Friday's Vocabulary / Literature Term Quiz

IV. Watch Video on Censorship

V. Continue with F451 discussion Part 1

HOMEWORK - Due Friday, 10/1

A. STUDY QUESTIONS: (F451, Pages 12-28)

1) Describe the bedroom Montag enters. Whom does the setting characterize?

2) At this point of realization, what happens to the smile on Montag’s face?

3) What is Montag’s answer to Clarisse’s question?

4) What event occurs that night which provides Montag
with an impression of the state of society? What is that impression?

5) In contrast, what does Montag next hear and long for?

6) Describe the new idea for the parlor walls about which Mildred is so excited.

7) What test of love does Clarisse give Montag, and how does he respond to it?

8) What observations does Clarisse make about how Montag differs from other firemen?

9) Describe the mechanical hound.

B. Study for Friday's Vocabulary / Literature Term Quiz

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Wednesday, September 29, 2004

English I CP (Grade 9) Periods 3 & 6

I. D.O.L. #5
II. Study questions for F451 due today and Censorship Paper
III. Reminder: Thursday, we will be reviewing Vocabulary & Literary Terms

*There we be a QUIZ on all vocabulary and
literature terms on Friday 10/1 *See list below

Fahrenheit
hearth
dimensions
parlor
pedestrian
subconscious
refracted
marionette
tallow
*FOUR NEW WORDS JUST ADDED
melancholy
olfactory
ballistics
trajectory

Symbols: Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

A. Blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of
a human being’s repressed soul or primal, instinctive self.

B. The salamander is one of the official symbols of the
firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks.

C. The symbol of the Phoenix refers not only to the cyclical nature
of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montag’s
spiritual resurrection.

Theme: A recurrent idea that is found in a story.

D. Censorship is a running theme throughout Fahrenheit 451.
However, the story doesn’t provide a single, clear explanation of
why books are banned in the future. Instead, it suggests that many
different factors could combine to create this result. These factors
can be broken into two groups: factors that lead to a general
lack of interest in reading and factors that make people actively
hostile toward books. The novel doesn’t clearly distinguish these two
developments. Apparently, they simply support one another.

V. Discuss Chapter 1, Fahrenheit 451 Pages 1-11 (Handout)

VI. HOMEWORK/CLASSWORK - Due Thursday 9/30

A. Continue reading Part 1 Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Pages 12 - 28

B. Compare Fireman Guy Montag, Mildred "Millie" Montag -
Montag's wife and Clarisse McClellan

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Tuesday, September 28, 2004

English I CP (Grade 9) Per. 3 & 6

I. JOURNAL # 4 "Interpretation of Quotation"

Ray Bradbury once said, "After all, a computer is a book
and a long-playing record is a book—they just have different
shapes."

What do you think he meant by this?

Do you agree or disagree?

Write a 1/2 page response

II. NOTES

Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes

Themes are the fundamental and often
universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Censorship
Fahrenheit 451 doesn’t provide a single, clear explanation
of why books are banned in the future. Instead, it suggests
that many different factors could combine to create this result.
These factors can be broken into two groups: factors that lead
to a general lack of interest in reading and factors that make
people actively hostile toward books. The novel doesn’t clearly
distinguish these two developments. Apparently, they simply
support one another.

The first group of factors includes the popularity of competing forms
of entertainment such as television and radio. More broadly, Bradbury
thinks that the presence of fast cars, loud music, and advertisements
creates a lifestyle with too much stimulation in which no one has the
time to concentrate. Also, the huge mass of published material is too
overwhelming to think about, leading to a society that reads condensed
books (which were very popular at the time Bradbury was writing)
rather than the real thing. The second group of factors, those that
make people hostile toward books, involves envy. People don’t like to
feel inferior to those who have read more than they have. But the novel
implies that the most important factor leading to censorship is the objections
of special-interest groups and “minorities” to things in books that offend them.
Bradbury is carefulto refrain from referring specifically to racial minorities—Beatty
mentions dog lovers and cat lovers, for instance. The reader can only try to infer
which special-interest groups he really has in mind. As the Afterword to Fahrenheit
451 demonstrates, Bradbury is extremely sensitive to any attempts to restrict
his free speech; for instance, he objects strongly to letters he has received
suggesting that he revise his treatment of female or black characters. He sees
such interventions as essentially hostile and intolerant—as the first step on
the road to book burning.

Knowledge versus Ignorance
Montag, Faber, and Beatty’s struggle revolves around the tension
between knowledge and ignorance. The fireman’s duty is to destroy
knowledge and promote ignorance in order to equalize the population
and promote sameness. Montag’s encounters with Clarisse, the old
woman, and Faber ignite in him the spark of doubt about this approach.
His resultant search for knowledge destroys the unquestioning ignorance
he used to share with nearly everyone else, and he battles the basic beliefs
of his society.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices
that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Paradoxes
In the beginning of “The Hearth and the Salamander,” Montag’s
bedroom is described first as “not empty” and then as “indeed empty,”
because Mildred is physically there, but her thoughts and feelings are
elsewhere. Bradbury’s repeated use of such paradoxical statements
—especially that a character or thing is dead and alive or there and not
there—is frequently applied to Mildred, suggesting her empty, half-alive
condition. Bradbury also uses these paradoxical statements to describe the
“Electric-Eyed Snake” stomach pump and, later, the Mechanical Hound.
These paradoxes question the reality of beings that are apparently living
but spiritually dead. Ultimately, Mildred and the rest of her society seem
to be not much more than machines, thinking only what they are told to
think. The culture of Fahrenheit 451 is a culture of insubstantiality and
unreality, and Montag desperately seeks more substantial truths in the
books he hoards.

Animal and Nature Imagery
Animal and nature imagery pervades the novel. Nature is presented
as a force of innocence and truth, beginning with Clarisse’s adolescent,
reverent love for nature. She convinces Montag to taste the rain, and
the experience changes him irrevocably. His escape from the city into
the country is a revelation to him, showing him the enlightening power
of unspoiled nature. Much of the novel’s animal imagery is ironic.
Although this society is obsessed with technology and ignores nature,
many frightening mechanical devices are modeled after or named for
animals, such as the Electric-Eyed Snake machine and the Mechanical Hound.

Religion
Fahrenheit 451 contains a number of religious references. Mildred’s
friends remind Montag of icons he once saw in a church and did not
understand. The language Bradbury uses to describe the enameled,
painted features of the artifacts Montag saw is similar to the language
he uses to describe the firemen’s permanent smiles. Faber invokes the
Christian value of forgiveness: after Montag turns against society, Faber
reminds him that since he was once one of the faithful, he should
demonstrate pity rather than fury. The narrative also contains
references to the miracle at Canaa, where Christ transformed
water into wine. Faber describes himself as water and Montag
as fire, asserting that the merging of the two will produce wine.
In the biblical story, Jesus Christ’s transformation of water into
wine was one of the miracles that proved his identity and instilled
faith in his role as the savior. Montag longs to confirm his own
identity through a similar self-transformation.

The references to fire are more complex. In the Christian tradition,
fire has several meanings: from the pagan blaze in which the golden
calf was made to Moses’ burning bush, it symbolizes both blatant
heresy and divine presence. Fire in Fahrenheit 451 also possesses
contradictory meanings. At the beginning it is the vehicle of a restrictive
society, but Montag turns it upon his oppressor, using it to burn Beatty
and win his freedom.

Finally, Bradbury uses language and imagery from the Bible to resolve
the novel. In the last pages, as Montag and Granger’s group walk
upriver to find survivors after the bombing of the city, Montag knows
they will eventually talk, and he tries to remember appropriate
passages from the Bible. He brings to mind Ecclesiastes 3:1,
“To everything there is a season,” and also Revelations 22:2,
“And on either side of the river was there a tree of life . . . and
the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations,” which
he decides to save for when they reach the city. The verse from
Revelations also speaks of the holy city of God, and the last line
of the book, “When we reach the city,” implies a strong symbolic
connection between the atomic holocaust of Montag’s world and
the Apocalypse of the Bible.



Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Blood
Blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of a
human being’s repressed soul or primal, instinctive self.
Montag often “feels” his most revolutionary thoughts welling
and circulating in his blood. Mildred, whose primal self has
been irretrievably lost, remains unchanged when her poisoned
blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood
by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine. The symbol of blood is
intimately related to the Snake machine. Bradbury uses the
electronic device to reveal Mildred’s corrupted insides and the
thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her.
The Snake has explored “the layer upon layer of night and stone
and stagnant spring water,” but its replacement of her blood
could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned, replaceable blood
signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless
others like her.

“The Hearth and the Salamander”
Bradbury uses this conjunction of images as the title of the first
part of Fahrenheit 451. The hearth, or fireplace, is a traditional
symbol of the home; the salamander is one of the official symbols
of the firemen, as well as the name they give to their fire trucks.
Both of these symbols have to do with fire, the dominant image of
Montag’s life—the hearth because it contains the fire that heats a
home, and the salamander because of ancient beliefs that it lives in
fire and is unaffected by flames.

“The Sieve and the Sand”
The title of the second part of Fahrenheit 451, “The Sieve and
the Sand,” is taken from Montag’s childhood memory of trying
to fill a sieve with sand on the beach to get a dime from a
mischievous cousin and crying at the futility of the task. He
compares this memory to his attempt to read the whole Bible
as quickly as possible on the subway in the hope that, if he
reads fast enough, some of the material will stay in his memory.
Simply put, the sand is a symbol of the tangible truth Montag
seeks, and the sieve the human mind seeking a truth that remains
elusive and, the metaphor suggests, impossible to grasp in any
permanent way.

The Phoenix
After the bombing of the city, Granger compares mankind to a
phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over
and over again. Man’s advantage is his ability to recognize when
he has made a mistake, so that eventually he will learn not to make
that mistake anymore. Remembering the mistakes of the past is the
task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe
that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of
culture and history. The symbol of the phoenix’s rebirth refers
not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth
of humankind but also to Montag’s spiritual resurrection.

Mirrors
At the very end of the novel, Granger says they must build a
mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark
recalls Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in “The
Hearth and the Salamander.” Mirrors here are symbols of
self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.

III. HOMEWORK/CLASSWORK - Due Wed. 9/29

Discuss Censorship. Students will agree on a definition of
censorship and then discuss incidents of censorship with which
they are familiar. Students might consider incidents in present-day
America, elsewhere in the world, and in the past; they might focus
solely on literature, or they might broaden the discussion to include
films, TV, art, the Internet, etc.

Write a one to two page paper explaining what "censorship" means to you.
How does censorship affect society? Should we protect others from what we
may think is inappropriate?

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Monday, September 27, 2004

English I CP (Grade 9) Periods 3 & 6


I. Review Chapter 1 Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

Read Pages 1- 11, Chapter 1 with one other classmate. Work in pairs
taking turns reading to one another. Discuss what you have
read once you complete Chapter 1, using

STUDY QUESTIONS:

The second paragraph describes the burning of a house containing books.

What image does this create for the reader?

What might this symbolism foreshadow?

What is the significance of Montag seeing his reflection in Clarisse’s eyes?

Clarisse causes Montag to recall a childhood memory in which a wish is embedded.

What is the significance of the memory and the wish?

What two observations does Clarisse make about Montag’s conversational mannerisms?

What things do the McClellans do cause them to be classified as peculiar?

What final question does Clarisse ask Montag on the night of their first encounter?

Why might this question be a catalyst to the plot?

When Montag enters his home, he stares at the blank wall but in memory sees Clarisse.

What extended simile describes how he sees her?

What is significant about the comparison?

Find two further similes Montag uses to describe Clarisse.

Do the similes serve any purpose other than to characterize Clarisse?

HOMEWORK

II. Vocabulary Words for F451 Chapter 1

Define the words listed below. Write 1/2 page
Synopsis about F451 Chapter 1, using all nine
words in your summary

Fahrenheit
hearth
dimensions
parlor
pedestrian
subconscious
refracted
marionette
tallow