Book Name : Fahrenheit
451
Author
: Bradbury, Ray
No. of Pages
: 154
Summary : (Taken from Wikipedia)
The Hearth and the Salamander
On a rainy night while returning from his job as a fireman, Guy Montag meets his new neighbor: a seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit force him to question his life, his ideals, and his own perceived happiness. Montag returns home to find that his wife Mildred has overdosed on sleeping pills, and calls for help. Since presciption drug overdoses have become commonplace, the hospital sends two impersonal technicians to pump her stomach and replace her blood. The next day, Montag finds Mildred in the kitchen, eating a big breakfast and rambling on feeling hungry and sore from supposedly having a party and drinking so much that she passed out. Before leaving for work, Montag tries to tell Mildred (who is watching an interactive TV program on three wall-sized screens that have been installed into three of the living room walls) that she overdosed, but Mildred denies that she would do anything that suicidal. For the next few days, Montag bonds with Clarisse, who tells him about how she has to see a therapist about her allegedly anti-social behavior, how school has become boring now that it's been devoid of intellectual content, and how her peers enjoy violent, shallow entertainment (such as street-racing (and "street-smashing"), bullying people, and dancing) and treat her as an outcast. One day, however, Clarisse goes missing. While talking to Mildred one night, Mildred mutters that Clarisse died after getting hit by a speeding car and the rest of her family moved out following her death.
In the following days, while at work with the other firemen ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman before the inevitable burning, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books: "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine" and hides it away before any of his coworkers can see. The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match and burn herself alive. Jarred by the woman's suicide, Montag becomes physically ill and calls for sick leave (despite Mildred's nagging and indifferent attitude when Montag vomits on the carpet). Fire chief Captain Beatty personally visits Montag, who predicted that something like this would happen. Beatty then tells the story of how books lost their value and where the firemen fit in: Ever since photography and film started to gain popularity and the world's population grew, books were simplified to please everyone, but soon were passed up for new media (i.e., radio, film, and TV) and anything involving social activity (i.e., sports). As time went on, many minority groups began protesting books for their controversial content, books were no longer published (as critics felt they were too bland to be enjoyable), and authors, teachers, and critics were seen as enemies in an increasingly anti-intellectual world. While Beatty is talking, Mildred feels the book hidden under Montag's pillow and reacts with surprise. Beatty adds casually that all firemen eventually steal a book out of curiosity (despite the fact that Beatty knows books are worthless), but if the book is burned within 24 hours, the fireman and his family won't get in trouble.
After Beatty has left, Montag shows Mildred the books he has hidden in the ventilator of their home. Mildred tries to incinerate the books, but Montag subdues her and tells her that the two of them are going to read the books to see if they have value. If they do not, he promises the books will be burned and all will return to normal.
[edit]The Sieve and the Sand
While going over the stolen books, Millie argues with Montag that books have no meaning and questions why Montag dragged her into this. Montag snaps back by mentioning Millie's suicide attempt, Clarisse's death, the book-house woman who burned herself, and how society is falling apart due to apathy and a pending war, then states that maybe the books of the past have messages that can save society from its own destruction. Before Montag can finish, Millie gets a call from her friends about coming over to watch the parlor walls.
Montag laments that Millie is a lost cause (and he will be too if he can't force himself to absorb the information in the books). Montag then remembers a man he once met in the park a year ago: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, though Faber refuses at first due to his cowardice. After Montag starts to rip a few pages from the beginning of a rare copy of The New Testament (one of the few left that actually says God's word, instead of advertising products), Faber relents and teaches Montag about the importance of literature in its attempt to explain human existence. He gives Montag a green bullet-shaped ear-piece communicator so that Faber can offer guidance throughout his daily activities. At Montag's house, Mildred has friends over to watch the parlor walls. Montag unplugs the walls and tries to engage the women into meaningful conversation, only to find that all of the women have rather cavalier, callous, and shallow attitudes about the upcoming war, death, their families, and politics. Montag then brings out a book of poetry to shock some emotion into them, which Mildred tries to cover up by saying that firemen every year bring home a book and read it just to show people how ridiculous books and their contents are. Montag reads the poem Dover Beach, which ends up making one of Mildred's friends cry, while the rest of them leave in disgust over how "filthy" the poem is. Montag burns the book while Mildred locks herself in the bathroom and takes her sleeping pills.
Montag returns to the firehouse the next day with only one of the books, which Beatty tosses into the trash. Beatty tells Montag that he had a dream in which they fought endlessly by quoting books to each other. In describing the dream Beatty shows that, despite his disillusionment, he was once an enthusiastic reader. A fire alarm goes off and Beatty picks up the address from the dispatcher system. He reminds Montag of his duty and theatrically leads the crew to the fire engine, which he drives to Montag's house, much to Montag's shock.
[edit]Burning Bright
Beatty orders Montag to destroy his own house, telling him that Mildred and the neighbors betrayed him. Montag sees Mildred speeding off and sets to work burning their home, not with kerosene and a match (which would burn it near instantly), but with a flamethrower, which can only do a part at a time, so that Montag has to spend a long time doing it all alone. Montag burns everything, including their televisions (these with enthusiasm), beds, and other emblems of his past life. After Montag incinerates the house, Beatty discovers Montag's earpiece and plans to hunt down Faber. Montag threatens Beatty with the flamethrower and, after Beatty continues taunting, kills him. As he flees the scene the firehouse's mechanical hound attacks him, numbing one of his legs with a tranquilizer needle. He destroys it with the flamethrower and limps away. After walking a while, Montag realizes that Beatty wanted to die, by taunting Montag when he could have been quiet and lived, and making an armed man (Montag) angry to the point where he pulled the trigger.
He flees through the city streets, arriving at Faber's house. Faber urges him to make his way to the countryside and contact the exiled book-lovers who live there. On Faber's television they watch news reports of another mechanical hound being released, with news helicopters following it to create a public spectacle. Montag leaves Faber's house and escapes the manhunt (which includes everybody in the city opening their doors at once) by jumping into a river and floating downstream into the countryside, which saves him by masking his scent from the mechanical hound. There, he meets a group of older men led by a man named Granger, who, to Montag's astonishment, have memorized entire books, preserving them mentally until the law against books is overturned (or the war destroys the cities). They burn the books they read to prevent discovery, retaining the verbatim content in their minds. Meanwhile, the television network helicopters record the hound killing another innocent man instead of Montag, to maintain the illusion of a successful hunt for the watching audience.
The war begins, and then, just as suddenly, ends. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons. It is implied Mildred dies, though Faber is stated to have left for St. Louis, to "see a retired printer there". It is implied that more cities across the country have been incinerated as well; a bitter irony in that the world that sought to burn is burned itself.
During breakfast at dawn, Granger discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth, adding that the phoenix must have some relation to mankind, which constantly repeats its mistakes, but that man has something the phoenix doesn't. It can remember the mistakes it made from before it destroyed itself, and not make them again. Granger then muses that a large factory of mirrors should be built, so that mankind can take a long look at itself. After the meal is over, the band sets off back toward the city, to help rebuild what is left of it.
No comments: