Fahrenheit 451 Test

"The people who had been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham's Dentifrice, Denham's Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham's Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three."

Alliteration

The protagonist in the novel is Montag. Be able to identify who the two antagonists are

Beatty and Mildred

Understand what Captain Beatty is saying about society in this quote: "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. . . . Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more."

Beatty is saying that people stopped reading and discussing because they are more interested in mass/pop culture

When Captain Beatty is scolding Montag before Montag kills him, understand what Beatty means when he says, "Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them."

Beatty is trying to reason with Montag, trying to get Montag to five in and go along with society while continuing to happily destroy books

Right before Montag hands Captain Beatty his book in the firehouse, Beatty says, "Well, here comes a very strange beast which in all tongues is called a fool." Beatty's quote is a line from Shakespeare's play As You Like It. Understand what Beatty is saying about Montag

Beatty uses the quote to show Montag that he is superior to Montag because he already has read books and knows more than Montag knows

Understand what Clarisse is saying in this quote: "People don't talk about anything. . . . They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else."

Clarisse is talking about her peers and how they are all the same/conform. She is also talking about being an outcast showing how she does not fit in

The following quote from Clarisse to Montag shows that Montag lacks independent thinking and, therefore, laughs at Clarisse's words because he doesn't stop to think about everything she says: "You laugh when I haven't been funny and you answer right off. You never stop to think what I've asked you." Be able to identify what theme is displayed in this scene that shows how Montag fits into society

Conformity

Identify what kind of figurative language Bradbury uses in this sentence: "I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames.

Dramatic irony, because firemen are supposed to be friendly and helpful, while in this society, they should be avoided, and they punish you

Understand the elements in this passage when Montag meets Professor Faber - "[Now Montag] remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something, quickly, in his coat. ". . . The old man leapt up as if to run. And Montag said, 'Wait!' "'I haven't done anything!' cried the old man, trembling."

Faber is scared of being caught with a book, and anyone outside seemingly doing nothing is considered to be suspicious to society

Understand what Faber is saying when he gives Montag a communication device to put in his ear, telling Montag, "I'm the Queen Bee, safe in my hive. You will be the drone, the travelling ear."

Faber sees Montag as a drone bee because he wants to use Montag to fulfill his own purpose, not caring at all about the outcome for Montag

Understand how alienation and loneliness is a theme seen in this passage: "He [Montag] made more soft sounds. He stumbled toward the bed and shoved the book clumsily under the cold pillow. He fell into bed and his wife cried out startled. He lay far across the room from her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea."

He feels no human connection with the woman who is his wife. Although he is in the same room as her, he feels and is alone

Understand what Captain Beatty is saying in this quote, "There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time."

He is saying that when people stay happy all the time, he means that people are so interested in popular culture, fitting in, and not having to things that people are actually quite happy to be ignorant and uneducated

Understand what Clarisse is saying about her family in this quote: "Oh, just my mother and father and uncle sitting around, talking. It's like being a pedestrian, only rarer. My uncle was arrested another time—did I tell you?—for being a pedestrian. Oh, we're most peculiar."

Her family enjoys having conversations more than watching tv or listening to the radio. They are also not accepted easily by society. Her family is also uncommon in this society

Understand what this quote says about Captain Beatty: "What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives."

It reveals that Captain Beatty despises Montag for taking books, calling Montag a traitor

When Montag says, "Let you alone! That's all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in awhile," understand how Clarisse has had an effect on him

It shows how Montag is transforming and changing

"Why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you're a squirrel?"

Metaphor

He lay far across the room from her, on a winter island separated by an empty sea

Metaphor

Understand why Mildred says this to her husband about the old woman who was reported to authorities for having books: "She's [the old woman] nothing to me; she shouldn't have had books. It was her responsibility, she should've thought of that. I hate her. She's got you going and next thing you know we'll be out, no house, no job, nothing."

Mildred is an average citizen who is scared about losing the comfort in her predictable life.

When Montag "walked toward the corner, thinking little at all about nothing in particular," understand what the narrator is showing about Montag's thoughts and actions, as well as how that connects to society as a whole.

Montag and the other characters are like sheep, they listen to authority, they don't act out or try to make themselves seen. They move with no particular thoughts. It develops a theme of conformity in society

Understand how Montag has been effected when he says, "There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."

Montag is changing, and Clarisse caused it.

"The alarm-voice in the ceiling chanted. There was a tacking-tacking sound as the alarm-report telephone typed out the address across the room."

Onomatopoeia

"Let the war turn off the 'families.' Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge"

Personification

Identify what kind of figurative language Bradbury uses in this sentence: "[T]he flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house."

Personification

Be able to identify the theme developed when Mildred tells Montag about how she is excited to play a part in a television show in this quote: "Well, this is a play that comes on the wall-to-wall circuit in ten minutes. They mailed me my part this morning. . . . They write the script with one part missing. It's a new idea. The homemaker, that's me, is the missing part."

Reliance on technology and popular culture

"He opened the bedroom door. It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon has set."

Simile

"He stared at the parlor that was dead and gray as the waters of an ocean that might teem with life if they switched on the electronic sun."

Simile

Identify what kind of figurative language Bradbury uses when describing a room in this sentence: "The three empty walls of the room were like the pale brows of sleeping giants now, empty of dreams."

Simile

Understand what this quote shows about Clarisse's and Montag's relationship: "Why is it that I feel I've known you so many years?"

Since Montag has been married so long, he feels bored with Mildred because he knows too much about Mildred. Clarisse is new and refreshing- he has learned a lot from her.Be able to identify the theme developed when Mildred tells Montag about how she is excited to play a part in a television show in this quote: "Well, this is a play that comes on the wall-to-wall circuit in ten minutes. They mailed me my part this morning. . . . They write the script with one part missing. It's a new idea. The homemaker, that's me, is the missing part."

What point of view is F 451 told in?

Third person

Understand what this quote says about Clarisse and Montag: "I heard once that a long time ago houses used to burn by accident and they needed firemen to stop the flames."

This angers Montag and he discredits Clarisse, thinking she is childish

Understand what this quote by Montag says about him: "Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me."

When Montag says this, he is proud of being a fireman. However, he later becomes sick of the smell and finds his job to be distasteful