Week Thirty-Two

Monday, April 29, 2024 9:10 AM

Monday

Scavenger Hunt!

1. Look up 1950’s advertisements in a Google search.

2. Select and analyze 10 advertisements that you feel would lead to a strange conformity. Go through the four step process of visual analysis. Look for Freudian subliminal messages—this became the thrust of the advertising industry in the 1950’s on Madison Avenue.

Small Group Discussion:

“The Sieve and the Sand”

1. Discuss questions from the study guide.

2. Discuss the following quotes:

“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insanemistakes!” (p. 70).

“The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great tonload of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium,and brass. The people were pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run...” (p. 75).

“I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regularpeppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercialproducts that every worshiper absolutely needs” (p. 77-78).

“I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did notspeak and thus became guilty myself” (p. 78).

“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There isnothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universetogether in one garment for us” (p. 79).

“The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-ninepercent of them is in a book. Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine,or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore” (p. 82).

“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents” (p. 85).“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn” (p. 100).

Homework- Read to page 120.

Tuesday

One In the Universe

Why would man, if he thought of the “slippery stuff”, be lonely?
“Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide-rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just won't be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely.” (58)

Compare this to “Richard Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson, and Simon and Garfunkel’s “Richard Cory” lyrics

Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

“Richard Cory” Lyricsby Simon and Garfunkel

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town
With political connections to spread his wealth around
Born into society, a banker's only child
He had everything a man could want, power, grace and styleBut I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be Richard CoryThe papers print his pictures almost everywhere he goes
Richard Cory at the opera, Richard Cory at a show
And the rumor of his parties and the orgies on his yacht
Oh, he surely must be happy with everything he's gotBut I, I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be Richard CoryHe freely gave to charity, he had the common touch
And they were grateful for his patronage and they thanked him very much
So my mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read
"Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head"But I, I work in his factory
And I curse the life I'm living
And I curse my poverty
And I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be
Oh, I wish that I could be Richard Cory

Alone

How are people alone in the 1950’s? Why are they alone?
“…everything that showed that he had lived here in this empty house with a strange woman who would forget him tomorrow, who had gone and quite forgotten him already, listening to her Seashell radio pour in on her and in on her as she rode across town, alone.” (110)
Compare this to Edward Hopper’s painting “The New York Movie”. Analyze the painting, and compare it to the themes in Fahrenheit 451