Plot 1
Who is the main character or protagonist of Fahrenheit 451?
Guy Montag
What happened to Clarisse?
She was hit by a car and killed.
Who is Mildred and why is she important?
Mildred is Montag's wife. At the beginning of the novel, she takes an entire bottle of sleeping pills, confirming for Montag that there is something wrong in their lives. She is also the person who reports Montag for keeping books in their house.
What is one characteristic of a dystopian society present in the novel?
Answers may vary
What theme does the following quote BEST connect with: "If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none."?
Censorship
What event causes Montag to question his society?
Clarisse McClellan asks Montag if he is happy.
Who is Clarisse McClellan and why is she important?
Clarisse is "seventeen and crazy," asks Montag if he is happy, reveals to him that he is not in love with Mildred, and generally makes him question his entire life.
Describe the Mechanical Hound.
Eight legs, glowing green eyes, four inch needle that shoots victims full of morphine or procaine, made of metal, not actually a dog
How is the society in Fahrenheit 451 disguised as a utopia?
Answers will vary
What theme does this quote BEST connect to: "Not everyone born free and equal, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against."?
Individualism
What does Montag remember after the city is bombed?
Montag finally remembers that he met his wife, Mildred, in Chicago.
How does Montag escape the Mechanical Hound?
He got Faber to wash away or burn the traces of his sent at Faber's house, took some of Faber's old clothes when he left, went to the river to wade in and splash himself with whiskey, wore Faber's clothes, and finally took a pill from Granger to change his scent.
What is the plan that Montag and Faber come up with to try to fix their society?
They will hide books in the homes of firemen and then call in reports about those books to attempt to make people not trust the firemen.
What type of dystopian control do the firemen represent?
What theme does this quote BEST connect with: "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."?
Knowledge
How does Beatty attempt to confuse Montag at the fire station?
Beatty quotes books that contradict one another to "prove" that books can only make people unhappy. Because books don't agree with each other all the time, they make people want to argue or they make people confused.
Why is Montag frustrated on the subway?
A Denham's Dentifrice commercial jingle plays constantly and loudly, and it ruins his concentration while he is trying to memorize a passage of the Bible.
What happened to the old woman in the house full of books and why is she important?
After the firemen cover her house and books in kerosene, she lights a match and dies along with her books. Her death sends Montag into a spiral because he has only ever burned things before, and he questions why she would die rather than let the books be taken.
What makes Montag an "accepted hero?"
Montag is fully a part of the dystopian society he lives in. He is a fireman who helps the government control the citizens, and in the first line of the book he says that "it was a pleasure to burn," showing that he is fully invested in the way that this society works. Montag genuinely believes that the restriction of information and thought are the best thing for his society at the beginning of the book, and he does not display any desire for individuality...at first. Montag becomes a dystopian hero when he begins to question his society.
What theme does this quote BEST connect with: "Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you?"
Social Interaction
What are the three things Faber claims are necessary to achieve happiness in life?
Quality information, the time to process it (leisure time), and the right to make choices or do something based on the information
What happens at the end of the manhunt for Montag?
Another man is caught and killed by the Mechanical Hound. Granger explains that the government keeps a record of the "odd ones...men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia" a.k.a. people who don't fit into their society, and that the information let them choose someone undesirable to be a scapegoat/fake Montag.
Explain the ending of the novel. Why is it significant?
After the city is bombed, Montag and the rest of the old men with old degrees begin following the train tracks back into the city. Granger explains that now that the war has devastated their society, they're going to use what they know to try to rebuild a better one, someday, by asking people to think about how they got to this point.
Dystopias are often accompanied by a backstory that explains how the society became a high-control society. What is the backstory in Fahrenheit 451?
The people became distracted by the ease of entertainment that technology provides and became concerned about how challenging information might make people unhappy, so they stopped seeking out sources of real information, like books. After the people had already given up reading, the government stepped in and outlawed books. The government also began to implement other measures of control, like providing disinformation to the citizens.
What theme does this quote BEST connect to: "He saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of color and motion where the family talked and talked and talked to her, where the family prattled and chatted and said her name and smiled at her and said nothing of the bomb that was an inch, now a half inch, now a quarter inch from the top of the hotel."
Technology