* 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 t

* 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.

I found the setting of when Guy Montag and Clarisse would talk outside beautiful and the most memorable. The setting was peaceful and both people were happy. I think I like this setting the most because it is the happiest feeling in the story and when they talk to each other, they seem to make each others day better. It was also meaningful to me because I love talking to people that look at life in a different way and make me understand things better.
The setting I thought was the most disturbing was when the firemen go to an old lady’s house and burn the house down because there were books in the attic. Not only do they do this, but they burn the house with the lady in it. She didn’t want to leave her books. I thought it was disturbing because they didn’t care what she thought or wanted and let her burn. They found that books were a matter of life and death which made me really shocked. I felt bad for the old lady and thought that this setting was sad and wrong. It disturbed me the most that the firemen just left silently after the house set fire. Since firemen these days are supposed to stop fires to save people, I think I felt weird because these firemen did the opposite. I couldn’t understand how people could be able to kill other people so easily over something so little as a book.

* 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 com

Montag gets the last laugh when he turns to Beatty’s dead body and says, “You always said, don’t face a problem, burn it. Well, now I’ve done both. Good-bye, Captain.”

* 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.
I think that this passage is significant because I can relate it to people I know that have done the same exact thing the passage says. The boys RA in Springer Dorm last year was Mr. Ted. When he had found any papers he thought were unacceptable or he didn’t want as a problem, he would burn them. He would take the papers and place them in his barbecue and put them on fire. He did this because when the papers got burnt, there would be nothing left of it and history. The problem would be gone he got an advantage; he had something to cook food on.
I really like this passage because Beatty is the one who told Guy Montag to burn books or whatever is a problem, and what is ironic is that Guy Montag ends up burning Beatty when Beatty was supposed to burn Guy Montag. I like when things people say gets backfired towards themselves. This passage is also significant because this kind of foreshadows the ending of the novel. In the end, the city is bombed and on fire. To some other people, the city is problem and that’s why they are at war, so they solve the problem by burning it with a bomb. This is very interesting to me and seems to me that the novel is based around burning all problems.

* what is the mood of this novel? do you find this novel saddens you in any way? why?

I think that the mood of this novel is sad and gloomy. It seems like the people have no freedom and are always filled with fear. The government seems to be like a dictatorship. People watch boring television that is made by the government all day, and live life like zombies. The people don’t have minds of their own, so everything is boring which makes life sad and depressing. Since this novel takes place in the future, mostly everything is done with new technology, so people don’t have to think. People live in fear that they might be caught by the mechanical hound if they have a book because they hunt people down and kill them if they do. What makes the mood even more gloomy and sad is that at the end of the novel, the war had ruined the city. Most of the story tells of an unhappy setting. The only positive mood in the story is when Guy Montag and the people he met after running away see a hope in future to make people change and want to read books.The mood of the novel makes me frustrated because if I lived in a society where people acted as they did in the novel I wouldn’t want to live. To me there would be no point in life to sit around all day and watch boring television. I would get so mad and try my best to get people to rebel against the government to receive more freedom.

* what is the climax of this novel? what happens? how do the events of this novel make you feel?

I think that the climax of the novel Fahrenheit 451 is a little after Guy Montag talks with the professor and realizes what he really thinks about burning books. He wants to save them. When the firemen come into his house, they want to get rid of the books, but Guy Montag kills Beatty. He can’t go back and change things now. Since he killed a general, he can’t go back to being a normal fireman. He murdered someone from the government and his only options are to change his life completely. Guy Montag must either get arrested, or run away. He must stick to what he has started. This is the climax because it is the point of no return for him.
When Guy Montag was told to burn most of his house I was getting mad at him for just giving in to what the firemen said. After he killed Beatty I felt very happy and proud of him. Up until the climax, I found that the story was very slow moving and boring, but when I read the climax, my interest increased. There was a lot of suspense to me about whether or not Guy Montag would get caught as he was running away. The climax was fast moving and kept me reading until the end of the book all at once. The beginning events made of the novel made me feel as if the setting was sometime in the olden times, but once the search for Guy Montag was described, it made me feel as if the setting was in the future.

* entry of your choice

I think that Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 novel wasn’t that interesting. I honestly think it was boring. It was supposed to be scary in a way, but to me it just sounded unrealistic. I think the reason I don’t like this book is because of the way Ray Bradbury writes. When he uses dialogue, it doesn’t sound like how people today or in the future would talk like. It sounded like robots talking and sometimes got me confused. How the characters acted in the book got me so annoyed and started to get boring instead of make me scared. An example of this is how everyone only watched the parlor or television all day and not read. The idea seems kind of stupid and unrealistic. This is probably because I have never been in a situation like the novel. I think that either people really like this book or really don’t like it. The good thing about the book is that even though it’s boring I can learn how to understand different styles of writing. However, unlike many other books, I don’t think I will read this book again. The one part I thought was really stupid in the book was when the police were having a big search for Guy Montag even though war had just started. Instead of making Guy Montag a big deal, they should have been more worried and occupied with what might happen to the city and try to find some way of protection or be more concerned with the war.

* are there are 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

Sadly, there are current situations in the world right now that relate to Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451. In this novel, books are banned from reading. All books are burned. This is similar to what is going on in many communist countries. China, for example is banned from reading or having a copy of the Holy Bible. An example of this shown is how a Chinese man, Lai Kwong-keung, a 38-year-old Hong Kong businessman, was detained by police for transporting 33,000 copies of the New Testament to Fuqing City in the Fujian Province last year according to National Review Online. He may even face the death penalty for this. This relates to how Guy Montag tried to get books and was almost killed, but escaped. To me, countries that ban books, especially to do with religion are undeveloped and uncivilized countries.

The novel sheds some light on how this problem in China can be fixed. It suggests that a large group of people should fight against the government, or to spread the information about the book orally from generation to generation. The good news is that not all the countries in the world are like China. The president of the United States of America, Mr. Bush, has gone to China in hopes of releasing Lai Kwong-keung and allowing the people of China to worship in peace. Hopefully there will be more freedom in reading any books in the future. When the Nazi’s were in power, they banned the Holy Bible and burned any copy they could. Luckily they were forced to stop. The whole world should be forced to stop banning the Bible right now too.

* what is the major theme of this novel? why is this theme important to a teenager living in 2007?

The theme of Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451 is about how we shouldn’t be afraid of ourselves. We shouldn’t depend on the government to think for us, or the television. In the story, no one can think for themselves, so they depend on the government for things to do. Ray Bradbury makes it clear that books help people be more independent and cause them to think on their own. He says it can cause bad feelings, but when people read it, they can learn from it. Reading books made from the past help us learn the good things we can do and the bad things we can prevent from happening.

Today as a teenager it is important to understand this because we can learn the importance of reading books. Thinking independently can make the world less boring and help us learn more. It would be a boring life if we lived like the people in the book because all they do is sit in front of the television all day and follow its way of thinking. Each person wouldn’t be as unique. We should take advantage of being able to read books as teenagers while we have the freedom to read it. The more we read, the more knowledge we can keep with us and are able to spread it on to other people if the freedom of reading books is taken away. I think it would be hard to live in a time when everyone must follow what the government thinks, and full of fear that if you have a book, they will burn it with everything around it. Let’s all read!