I have posted comments on these peoples' blogs...

- Dan Kim
- Ganaa Jargal
- Salome Yom
- Sharon Kim
- Sumin Kang
- Young Chang

Are there any settings in this novel which you have found to be beautiful? Or disturbing? Or memorable? Describe these settings and comment on why they were meaningful to you.

All through this book, many settings were introduced and displayed. Beautiful ones. Horrific ones. Blank ones. A great variety. But one setting woke me up just as I was dozing off from reading the book for too long a time period. It was beautiful, yet simple. Nothing fancy, but made me want it more than anything. Most of the reason for this, was because of my background.

"What is this incredible setting?" you ask. I realized in my previous blog on The Lord of the Flies that copying out a passage word for word is very time consuming, and time is very important in my life, so I would ask that you'd forgive me for not having the passage directly up here on my page.

Anyway, the setting I really enjoyed reading and could not possibly stop was when Guy Montag is running away from the Mechanical Hound, and is floating down the river. While submerged in water, he imagines himself in a barn loft, sleeping in the hay, going to bed seeing a beautiful young lady in the window braiding her hair, and waking up to find a glass of milk, an apple, and a pear laying at the bottom of the stair. The perfect setting...

Many may think, "A farm? What's so great about a farm?" But only those who've never been on farm think like that. You see, I grew up in a farming town. Three hundred people. That's all. No more. Everyone knew each other. It was nice! Being on my friends farms... the joy is unexplainable! There's nothing around save for some cows, horses, and other farm animals. You drive in, to your right, a big red barn, to your left, a small house for the family that lives there, straight ahead, a field. A field with something growing. There's nothing but you and those three wonders. You enter the barn, you see horses or cows in their stalls. At the end, many tools and farm equipment, the farmers' needs. To your right, a small, normally unnoticeable stairway leading to the loft. You walk up the staircase, and you see nothing but a stack of hay and a very large window. A window big enough for ten of you to fit through at the same time. A window overlooking the house, and the rest of the field behind it. Beautiful. You go back outside, and think, about how nice it is here. You fell like you are the only one here in this world, save for a few people closest to you. You feel... you feel free!

That's a brush of what being on a farm feels like. Every detail about the world, you notice, and you feel amazed. In a city, too much is going on to really notice much or go in detail about anything, but on a farm, you're free. The world cannot stop you from anything. You OWN the world, in your mind at least. That setting I had created up above was not fiction. I took simple memories of my past and pieced them together to try and portray what a farm is like. But you can't know for sure until you are at one, a plain one, with nothing going on. Nothing but you...


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What is the major theme of this novel? Why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2008?

When I finished the book, I was thinking, "Oh, dang! How am I going to do this? I have only a few days left, and I have NO idea on what the theme is." Then, I noticed a small note on the top of the book, that said the theme. Right there! On the cover! The theme! This will be easy. "It says... CENSORSHIP!" Okay! Censorship! I've got this theme down pat! Easy! One problem... What the heck is censorship? So, I started from scratch and tried to find out what censorship was. How? Well, the book! Of course! I searched for a theme... and I believe I found one.

The main theme of Fahrenheit 451 was, as I mentioned not seconds ago, censorship. What is that exactly? Censorship is, simply, the act of banning something that could be useful for one's enemy. Well, how does that apply to Bradbury's novel? The government and the firemen ban books, in fear that humanity will regain its ability to think. Simply, the firemen are the censors, and humanity is the "enemy".

But why in the world was the government so keen on humanity's ability to think? Well, some simply state that they just want everybody to have fun. What I think, however, is that that's a cover-up that the gov't presents to the peple, but really the leaders of the society, a.k.a. the government, wants to create a utopian society. How? By removing the ability to think and make choices that may bring down the society. And the gov't knows that if they can take away peoples' thinking, they think for them, making the government an emulator of "God". Yet, everyone knows that a utopian society does not exist. Everyone knows that nothing is perfect. So what do the gov't do about it? They get rid of humanity's path to thinking, books. Firemen are established, to obliterate all books in the world, and seize and arrest all who have gained the power of thinking through books.

So what is the gov't REALLY doing through all this? They do not realize it, but they are creating a dystopian society pretending to be utopian. This leads to a much broader theme than censorship. A theme that all the dystopia books have in common, and that's exactly it. Dystopian society, meaning, simply, a chaotic world. In the book, there's two forms of dystopia going on. There is the big one, the censors verses humanity and those who see the truth. But there is also another that is brushed through the book, and touched a little more towards the end. Going on at the same time Guy Montag is going through a life-changing period of his life, a war is going on, which, evidently, leads to the bombing of several cities, including the one Montag had run away from not a day before. In his change, he was saved. If it were not for the act that he had decided to do something about the firemen, leading to his criminology, leading to his running away, which meant he was not in the city. Then some think, "Yes, all the right people who see the truth are saved! Woohoo! *sarcasm*" But, no. What about Clarisse, or the woman that burned herself because all her books were gone. They died, and they were two that REALLY saw the truth. This shows just how much more dystopian the society was. The good guys die. Yeah, REALLY utopian, government...


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Are there any current situations in the world that relate to the novel? What are they, and how do they relate? Does the novel shed any light on how current situations could be resolved or "fixed"?

I'm not too good with the whole "let's relate our book to the world!" type of thing, so I fail to see a current situation in the world, but I do see a situation that ended not even twenty years ago, one that had been going on for a very long time. "What is this phenomenon?" you ask. One word. Communism.

Communism has been going on for a very long time in many countries, and some even today, and was very similar to the censorship presented in Bradbury's novel. The government "ties down" the people so that they may control them. Create a world where everybody gets along and is the same. Everyone is equal, and certain items are banned from the country. In North Korea, Kim Jung-IL makes everyone treat him and his father as gods. They make them carry around little red books that tell about "how great North Korea is" and all that other junk they're being fed.

What was the result of communism? It failed, at a certain extent. Most of the world went on t democracy or at least government systems similar to the democratic system. Then, in the future, according t the book, it's communism all over again. Just as Granger wisely stated near the end of the book, the world and its society is like a phoenix. It goes, then starts over again. The world gets out of control, it goes under communism, then there's too much control and the world is released, you could say, and then becomes quite nice, until it is out of control again. Granger also mentioned that eventually, the world would need to people with remembered books, and the world would be restored back with books and the ability to think, and it goes on forever. An unending cycle, doing just that: not ending. So this book shows a similar situation in our world, and that problem is the world itself, and how it works.

So how exactly does this book show how we can help our problem? It shows us that it's coming, a time like the years of communism. It warns us, and shows that there is still chance to restore the world when that time comes. Until it comes...


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Who are the main characters in the novel? Do you like them? Why or why not? What is special about them? What do they reveal about the universal human experience?

Guy Montag, who is he? He is a person, who could not be that person, if it were not for other people. People such as Mildred, Clarisse, Faber, Beatty, and even Granger. People shape people, and make each other. these characters all have ties with Montag, that lead him to be the character he is presented as at the end of Fahrenheit 451.

First, we have, of course, Guy Montag himself. Guy Montag is the primary protagonist of the story, and it is focused around an important time in his life. He is a very contradictory character in this novel, yet represents humanity as a whole the best. He starts out as a fireman, the censors, yet his purpose in life changes to ridding of the world's firemen. He is often confused or angry in the book, which leads him to do the things he does, which, evidently, shapes his character. He goes from Guy Montag to GUY MONTAG, through these people and actions.

The one who had started it all, was a seventeen year old girl by the name of Clarisse McClellan. She showed Montag how to think. She taught him how to not just know stuff happens, but to want to know why that happens. She also told him of a past when things were different. This all confused Montag, yet comforted him, for he was sad when he heard the news of Clarisse's death.

Secondly, was Montag's wife, Mildred, who, surprisingly, appears to be one antagonist of Montag. She turned Montag in for having books, she hated Montag fr even having books, and avoided directly talking about her and Guy's relationship together. She showed that Montag was needing something, when he saw the dandelion was right, once he thought about it, and that Mildred did nothing for him.

Also, there was Faber. Faber was an old man that hid in his house, for fear that his knowledge of the world may get him killed. He denied any relationship with books, until Montag sent out looking for him. Together they tried to overthrow the firemen, though he had preferred not at first. He is a very noble man, but hides himself inside, so not much is really known about him.

Montag was even influenced by people he didn't even know. The lady who had committed suicide made him curious on why books were so valuable, that a woman would take away her own life because her books were burned. This GREATLY affected the plot and Montag's way of thinking. Had it not been for her, he would not be so curious on what was presented in the books.

And then there was Beatty. He plays as Montag's friend early in the novel, but shows he is really an antagonist near the end. The death of Beatty plays a gigantic role in how the plot is affected, and is the reason Montag left the city, saving his life.

Lastly, was Granger. Many see Granger as unimportant in the story, but not many see what he comes to represent. Granger represented, to me, God. The path not taken by many leads you to Granger, with a few people, and when you come to find him, he provides for your needs, though life comes to be difficult. Granger knows much about life, and strays not from the path he was set out to follow. Because Montag came to him, he was saved from death, along with the rest of the people with Granger. Granger is out in the world to do one thing. Save it if it needs help. Granger is a representation of God in this novel. To save...


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What is the climax of this novel? What happens? How do the events of this novel make you feel?

There are two types of people in this world. Those who see what the climax is, and those who don’t. People who don’t follow it by simple definition. “The climax is the turning point of the story, and is generally the most exciting part.” A common definition taught in high school language arts. But is literature really all that great if it’s just a story following rules? No! It needs to be free. It needs to flow, with what the writer is attempting to present in the form of a novel. Because of this, I have made my own meaning of climax. The climax is the part of the story that counts, that makes it a story, that changes everything. Others I have explained this to said, “Yeah, okay!” Then use it the wrong way. This can easily be mistaken as the “call to adventure” where the main character says, “should I do it, or not?” And there may even be more than one adventure. So the climax, to me, is a call to adventure, but the one that the book’s meaning is taken from.

Montag had many choices. Whether or not to have conversations with Clarisse. That changed a lot. Whether or not to steal books. That changed a lot. Whether or not to read Mildred’s friends poetry. That changed a lot. Whether or not to call up Faber and work with him. That changed a lot. But what really changed everything, what I see to be the climax of Fahrenheit 451 is the choice Guy Montag chose to murder Captain Beatty. Normally I would write out the passage, but time is gold, so I’ll simply explain the part in which so much anger builds up in Montag, mad at Beatty, mad at Mildred, mad at the world! Mad enough to murder, and that’s what he did. Had he not done that, if he had simply been arrested, there would be no reason to be on the loose. Beatty admitted himself that one person that knows the truth couldn’t do much anything about it anyway. But he killed Beatty, which gave him a reason to run. It gave him a reason to leave the city. And, had he not left the city, he would have been no better off than being caught by the Mechanical Hound. But he left, which saved his life, and gave that saved life a purpose. The purpose of remembering. Of thinking. Of being a REAL human…


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Please choose one passage from the novel that is significant to you. Why is this passage meaningful? Please type it into one of your entries and comment on what you think about the passage.

By some, random words mean absolutely nothing. By few others, such as I, random words can be the most beautiful thing in the world. One of my favourite passages from Fahrenheit 451 is nothing but words. Seemingly random words, but meaning can be extracted, if put in the right sense, so to speak.

The passage I'm talking about is when Guy Montag, is, suddenly, confused. About everything. On the last paragraph on page 17, continuing on page 18, seemingly random words are repeated, over and over. This shows the confusion Guy Montag had been struggling with. It gives us a view of what's going through his head, and is expressed beautifully.

Montag had just finished his conversation with Clarisse, when he comes home to find his wife, Mildred, unconscious due to drug abuse, sleeping pills, to be exact. Then, after she is restored by two men Montag had never seen before in his life, he lies down to go to bed, and all the stuff that had happened just that one day flashes through his mind, and he's confused. He's never felt that way before. Never thought about anything before, and he is given a taste of what thinking is like, just briefly, before falling asleep.

I particularly like this passage because life is confusing, yet if looked at from a different perspective, can be beautiful. Also, I often feel like Montag. I have so much going on at once, in my life, so many decisions to make, and so little time to make them, so many things to do, and so little energy to do them. SO much, but not enough to provide an easy solution, so my life is filled with complications, filled with confusion. And I try to figure stuff out, causing me to think myself to sleep, just as Montag did in that passage.

But there is one thing that sticks in my mind, and is the primary reason I like this passage. Thinking is never random...


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