Week Thirty-Three

"Well," said Beatty, "now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he's burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. Didn't I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?" (107)

Technology - The serpent in the garden of eden?

Technology is:

The perversion of Nature
Destroys Nature
Controls how we think and how we act - - “people being turned into morons by TV.”
Nature is truth. Technology overcomes Nature.
Technology can destroy us all. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Robert Oppenheimer
Compare to Sheeler’s “American Landscape” and George Innes’ “Lackawanna Valley"

Mass Media

Is there a danger in mass media? What effect does it have? What connections can you make to prior knowledge?
“It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.” (55)
What is the “mass” described here, and what is its origin?
”When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it come about, where, when? Well, I'd say it really got started around about a thing called the Civil War. Even though our rule-book claims it was founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came into its own. Then--motion pictures in the early twentieth century. Radio. Television. Things began to have mass.” (51)
Eadward Muybridge invents the zoopraxiscope based on a bet.

Education

What has happened to education? What has school evolved into and why?
”School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?"

Nature

Fahrenheit 451 creates a dichotomy between the world of technology and the world of nature. The former is cold and destructive, while the latter is engaging and informative. It is only in nature that the novel’s main character is able to think clearly and draw conclusions from his experiences. The novel argues that nature, in fact all of life, is a cycle of construction and destruction. This is the natural way of things, but technology has focused only on destruction and violence, leaving man in a devastating, unnatural state.

Return to Romanticism

Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?"

“I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help." "You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. (78)

Romantic Ideas in the 1800’s:
- Enlightenment philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau rejected progress and urged a return to a more natural existence in order to save man…an existence where feeling and sentiment was above reason.
- A New Interest in the Medieval Period (Longing for the Past): The fears and questions that the Industrial Revolution raises also sparks a new interest in the “Dark Ages” - which was open to the world of fantasy including the ghoulish, the infernal, the sadistic, and all the other horrific imagery that comes when REASON SLEEPS
Discussion: How are these ideas surfacing, yet again, in the 1950’s? What technological boom do we see that is similar to the Industrial Revolution? Is Bradbury suggesting, as technology becomes the driving force in Post WWII society, that reason is sleeping?
“Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself.”

WIlliam Wordsworth “The World is Too Much With Us"

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Is the technological world in Fahrenheit 451, like William Wordsworth Says, “too much with us”?

The Perversion of Nature

Look closely at the following quote. What do we know about the hound? Think about the juxtaposition of the hound and the bee. What can we glean from this? Look for passages in the book that describe the hound. What do you notice? In those passages, what is conveyed about nature?
“He went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely, and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound. It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.”

What has happened to the hound, and how can this same thing relate to people?
”It doesn't think anything we don't want it to think." "That's sad," said Montag, quietly, "because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if that's all it can ever know."' (25)

The Snake

What is this an allusion to, and what could it mean?
”What for! Why!" said Montag. "I saw the damnedest snake in the world the other night. It was dead but it was alive. It could see but it couldn't see. You want to see that snake? It's at Emergency Hospital where they filed a report on all the junk the snake got out of you! Would you like to go and check their file? Maybe you'd look under Guy Montag or maybe under Fear or War. Would you like to go to that house that burnt last night? And rake ashes for the bones of the woman who set fire to her own house! What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue! Listen!”(69)
“And the men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths, the men with the eyes of puff-adders,” (13)
Compare to George Innes’ “Lackawanna Valley”.

Small Group Discussion:

DIscuss the questions for Part Three of the Study Guide. Then, discuss the following questions:

Compare Clarisse and Mildred with respect to their physical appearance, what they enjoy doing, and how theyrelate to Montag.
Analyze Beatty’s character. What has happened to him? Why does he want to burn books? Does he really want todie as Montag thinks? Why would he? What is his world view in the end?
Compare Montag with Beatty. How are they alike and how are they different in terms of their world view, theirmotivation, and their moral character?
In the course of the novel, Montag undergoes some major changes in his understanding and in how he conductshis life. In an essay analyze and discuss the changes in Montag’s awareness about himself and about the world helives in and the corresponding changes in his behaviors as a result of his increased awareness.
Trace the image of re from the opening page of the novel to Montag’s encounters with re at the wildernesscamps. How is re used as a symbol in the novel?
In an interview on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Bradbury said that he is never negative about the futureof our society; if a story is pessimistic, he offers solutions, suggestions about what should done to change andimprove things. What is Bradbury’s solution to totalitarian regimes? What is the individual’s responsibility as acitizen? How realistic do you nd his solution in the novel? Why?
In the same interview Bradbury said that writers should only write what is true. Can you apply this criteria toFahrenheit 451? In what ways does the novel present the truth? First explain what you understand is true and thenidentify examples in the novel that demonstrate truth.
The novel shows advances in technology affecting the lives of the characters. Describe some of these advancesand how the technology is bene cial or problematic in the lives of the characters.
Discuss how Montag’s initial condition applies to your sense of yourself in the world. In what ways is your lifesimilar to Montag’s? How different? Do you experience similar feelings of alienation from friends, fellow students,parents or other adults? How do you deal with feelings of alienation?

10. At the end of the novel Montag joins the people in the wilderness who believe their most important act is to keepbooks alive by memorizing them. If you were one of these people, what literary, philosophical or other text(s)would you memorize? Explain your choice. What is it about the text that makes it important that it should survive?

Nature is contrasted with the city near the end of the novel with the conclusion that nature will survive no matterwhat humans do to themselves. Discuss what is unnatural in Montag’s society and possible solutions to theproblems of society that would be in harmony with the natural world.
Describe the novel’s commentary about war. What are its causes? How do citizens respond when war is declared?What are the individual and community effects of war?

Mildred

What is interesting about this description of Mildred?
“The most significant memory he had of Mildred, really, was of a little girl in a forest without trees (how odd!) or rather a little girl lost on a plateau where there used to be trees (you could feel the memory of their shapes all about) sitting in the center of 42 the "living-room." The living-room; what a good job of labeling that was now. No matter when he came in, the walls were always talking to Mildred.”(41)
What telling detail do we see with Mildred here?
“He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often-he searched for a simile, found one in his work-torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?”

The Fish

What is the absurdity in the parlor wall program? What metaphor does Bradbury use to compare?
“Abruptly the room took off on a rocket flight into the clouds, it plunged into a lime-green sea where blue fish ate red and yellow fish. A minute later, Three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off each other's limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter. Two minutes more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air. “ (90)
“Montag reached inside the parlour wall and pulled the main switch. The images drained away, as if the water had been let out from a gigantic crystal bowl of hysterical fish.” (90)

The Park

Is this an integral setting? What does it mean?
“His name was Faber, and when he finally lost his fear of Montag, he talked in a cadenced voice, looking at the sky and the trees and the green park, and when an hour had passed he said something to Montag and Montag sensed it was a rhyme less poem. Then the old man grew even more courageous and said something else and that was a poem, too. Faber held his hand over his left coat-pocket and spoke these words gently, and Montag knew if he reached out, he might pull a book of poetry from the man's coat. But he did not reach out. His. hands stayed on his knees, numbed and useless. "I don't talk things, sir," said Faber. "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive.”” (71)

“Dover Beach” - Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm tonight.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Compare the end of Sophocles’ Antigone to Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

“Happy are they whose life has not tasted evils. But for those whose house has been shaken by God, no mass of ruin fails to creep upon their families. It is like the sea-swell...when an undersea darkness drives upon it with gusts of Thracian wind; it rolls the dark sand from the depths, and the beaches, beaten by the waves and wind, groan and roar."

Homework- Study for Thursday’s test on 451.

Friday

Dover Beach Analysis and Connection to 451

Consumerism in the 1950’s

Consumer Culture In the 1950s consumption became the reigning value and essential to individual’s identity and status and satisfaction was achieved through the purchase and use of new products.
4 out of 5 families owned television sets, nearly all had refrigerators, and most owned at the least one car. The number of shopping centers quadrupled between 1957 and 1963.
What spurred this abundance? A population surge which expanded demand for products and boosted industries ranging from housing to baby goods. Consumer borrowing also fueled economic boom, as consumers increasingly made more purchases on installment plans. Diner’s Club issued the first credit card in 1951 – as a result private debt more than doubled during the decade.
TV also had an impact on the consumer culture – commercials for the products of the affluent society.
Advertisers spent $10 billion to push their goods. Television dominated leisure time, influenced consumption patterns, and shaped perceptions of the nation’s leadership.

Gender Roles in the 1950’s

"The Feminine Mystique" - Betty Friedan

"Housewives are mindless and thing-hungry... ; They are trapped in trivial domestic routine and meaningless busywork within a community that does not challenge their intelligence. Housework is peculiarly suited to the capabilities of feeble-minded girls; it can hardly use the abilities of a woman of average or normal human intelligence."
“Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.”

Taken from a 1950's American High School Home Economics textbook, the essay is entitled "How to be a Good Wife." It reads in part:

“Have dinner ready. Prepare yourself. Touch up your makeup, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people. Be a little gay and a little more interesting. Clear away the clutter -- run a dust cloth over the tables. Prepare the children: Take a few minutes to wash the children's hands and faces, comb their hair, and if necessary change their clothes. They are God's creatures and he would like to see them playing the part. Minimize all noise. . .eliminate the noise of the washer, dryer, dishwasher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet.
Some Don'ts: Don't greet him with problems or complaints. Don't complain if he is late for dinner. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Listen to him: You may have dozens of things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first. Make the evening his. Never complain if he does not take you out to dinner or other pleasant entertainments.”

Compare the ideals of “The Good Housewife” to the Victorian “Cult of Domesticity":

The attributes of True Womanhood, by which a woman judged herself and was judged by her husband, her neighbors, and her society, could be divided into four cardinal virtues:
Piety - a religious habit of mind and spirit, enacted through service, suffering, upholding Christian morality in the home
Purity - sexually virtuous, chaste, proper in all relations with ―the opposite sex
Submissiveness - obedience, in ALL things, to one‘s husband, because she is inferior in reason, strength, and intelligence
Domesticity - the private sphere of the home is woman‘s sacred space; housekeeping is her ―morally uplifting task; she must avoid frivolous or intellectually challenging distractions.

Bewitched Pilot Episode

Coping with Depression

“In the bathroom, water ran. He heard Mildred shake the sleeping tablets into her hand.” (98)
The Little Yellow Pill
"Mother’s Little Helper” - The Rolling Stones

What a drag it is getting old

"Kids are different today"

I hear ev'ry mother say

Mother needs something today to calm her down

And though she's not really ill

There's a little yellow pill

She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper

And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day

"Things are different today"

I hear ev'ry mother say

Cooking fresh food for a husband's just a drag

So she buys an instant cake and she burns her frozen steak

And goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper

And two help her on her way, get her through her busy day

Doctor please, some more of these

Outside the door, she took four more

What a drag it is getting old

”Men just aren't the same today"

I hear ev'ry mother say

They just don't appreciate that you get tired

They're so hard to satisfy, You can tranquilize your mind

So go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper

And four help you through the night, help to minimize your plight

Doctor please, some more of these

Outside the door, she took four more

What a drag it is getting old

"Life's just much too hard today"

I hear ev'ry mother say

The pursuit of happiness just seems a bore

And if you take more of those, you will get an overdose

No more running for the shelter of a mother's little helper

They just helped you on your way, through your busy dying day

The Finishing School

Smith College Song

You’re sharp as a pin point,

Your marks are really ten point,

You are Dean’s List, Sophia Smith –

But if a man wants a kiss, kid,

He doesn’t want a Quiz Kid –

Oh, you can’t get a man with your brains!

Your French may be flowing,

Your Russian just as knowing,

You may sprechen zie Deutsch with ease –

But love for a man is The Universal language –

Oh you can’t get a man with your brains!

You might know the futility

Of marginal utility

And believe that our enterprise is free –

But that’s irrespective

Of love, which is collective,

Oh, you can’t get a man with your brains!

You may know Lucretius,

And all the things he teaches,

You may think with Socratic skill –

But when a guy wants a mate, oh

He isn’t quoting Plato,

Oh, you can’t get a man with your brains!

You have Joyce in your carrel

And write like James T. Farrell,

You recite all of Shakespeare’s plays –

But you can’t get a Romeo With a Smith diplomee-oh.

No, you can’t get a man with your brains!

Homework- Study for test over the 1950’s.

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