Fahrenheit 451 and Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”
Context
Montag reads a portion of this poem to Mildred, Mrs. Phelps, and Mrs. Bowles in Part Two of Fahrenheit 451.
Bradbury sets the scene for Montag’s reading with these sentences:
“The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting . . . Then he began to read in a low, stumbling voice that grew firmer as he progressed from line to line, and his voice went out across the desert, into the whiteness, and around the three sitting women there in the great hot emptiness.”
Context
After he finishes reading, Bradbury writes . . .
“Mrs. Phelps was crying. The others in the middle of the desert watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape. They sat, not touching her, bewildered with her display. She sobbed uncontrollably. Montag himself was stunned and shaken.”
Why might Bradbury have chosen to describe the room as “an empty desert,” “the great hot emptiness,” and “the middle of the desert?
What might his imagery and use of metaphor represent?
Context
Once Montag sends Mildred and the other women away, Bradbury describes the scene: “Doors slammed and the house was empty. Montag stood alone in the winter weather, with the parlor walls the color of dirty snow.”
On the next page, Montag thinks to himself, “His mind would well over at last and he would not be Montag any more . . . He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water, and then, one day, after everything had mixed and simmered and worked away in silence, there would be neither fire nor water, but wine.”
How does Bradbury’s imagery and use of metaphor in these passages add complexity and meaning to this section?
Context
At the end of Part Two, Bradbury makes an allusion to Matthew 3:12 (“His winnowing fork is in his hand. He will clean up his threshing floor and gather his grain into the barn, but he will burn the chaff with inextinguishable fire”). The term “chaff” refers to plant husks and “kernels” or “grain” to the harvested, edible parts of a plant.
“[Montag] all the while thinking of the women, the chaff women in his parlor tonight, with the kernels blown out from under them by a neon wind, and his silly damned reading of a book to them. How like trying to put out fires with water pistols, how senseless and insane. One rage turned in for another. One anger displacing another. When would he stop being entirely mad and be quiet, be very quiet indeed?”
Read Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”