WEEK ONE DISCUSSION PREPARATION: DISTRACTION AND SOCIAL

ISOLATION (Pages 1-47)

1. What is the reason Clarisse gives for why people seem unaware of what grass
and flowers are?
2. What is Montags reaction to Clarisse telling him about billboard signs?
3. Why do you think he reacts this way?
4. What do you think about the disposable tissue quotation on page 18? How
applicable is this idea to our world?
5. Pay attention to the things Clarisse says from page 29-31. To what degree
would her point be valid in todays world?
6. Take a moment to think about what you have read so far. What are at least
three ways people in this world keep themselves distracted?
7. Find 3 more examples between pages 35 47 that suggest this world of
distraction alienates people from each other.

Blog Entry #1:

Section 1: Discuss the ways the people in this novel use technology to distract
themselves. What are some of the negative things that come from all this
distraction?
Section 2: What was the experience like for you when trying to stay off social
media for a week? Why do you think you were able or not able to do it? How many
similarities do you see between our world, and the way we use technology, and the
world in Fahrenheit 451?

WEEK TWO DISCUSSION PREPARATION: THE LINK BETWEEN CONFLICT AND

IDENTITY (Pages 48-98)
1. Between pages 50 and 60, there are sections where labels are used to
describe and control people. What are two examples of negative labels given
people in this society? Why are they seen as negative?

2. As you read the discussion where Beatty is talking to Montag, pay attention
to Beattys explanation about what sort of question makes people unhappy.
Do you agree with his idea? In what way could asking questions like these be
upsetting for those who are in charge?
3. When Beatty is talking to Montag he explains why literature is both useful
and feared. What does he say? Write down the quotation.

4. Do you think he is right? In what way can books both challenge and reinforce
the way we see ourselves?
5. What does Beatty say gives us comfort? Write the quotation.
6. Do you think this is true? Why?
7. In what way can Montags conflict be understood as him struggling with his
identity, not only with who he is, but with how he would like to be seen by
others?

Blog Entry #2:

Section 1: Where in the novel do we see evidence that conflict is often the result of
people struggling to control their own identity, or the identity of others?
Section 2: What is an example from your own life that supports this idea?

WEEK THREE: WHY WE LIE TO OURSELVES AND OTHERS

(Pages 98-145)

1. Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words, said Mrs. Bowles. Why do
people want to hurt people? Not enough hurt in the world, you got to tease
people with stuff like that (101). What are the silly words to which Mrs.
Bowles is responding? Why does she respond this way to Montags words?

2. On page 119, Beatty says Speech away, whatll it be this time? Why dont
you belch Shakespeare at me, you fumbling snob? There is no terror,
Cassius, in your threats, for I am so armd so strong in honesty that they pass
me as an idle wind, which I respect not! Hows that? Go ahead now, you
second-hand litterateur, pull the trigger (119). What does Beatty realize
later about why Beatty says this to him? In what way was Beatty lying to
himself? What were the consequences of his lying to himself?
3. I feel like Im alive for the first time in years, said Faber. I feel Im doing
what I shouldve done a lifetime ago. For a little while Im not afraid. Maybe
its because Im doing the right thing at last (131). What does this quotation
suggest about Faber and why he was lying to himself about what he should
be doing? What kept him from living the way he knew was right?
4. Who is another character from earlier in the novel who lies to herself about
the truth? Why is she lying to herself? How does she lie to herself?
5. What is a quotation after page 140 that suggests really thinking about the
world and our place in it can be hard, perhaps even terrifying, work?
6. Make a list of characters who have lied in this book and make a list of who
they have lied to. Why are these characters lying to themselves and others?

Blog Entry #3:

Section 1: What is an insight you gained from the discussion about why we lie to
ourselves and why we it can be hard to recognize quickly when we are doing this?
What are some specific examples in the novel that support this insight?
Section 2: What is an example from your own life that demonstrates the truth of
this insight? Please tell the story and explain how the insight from the novel can
apply to it.

Fahrenheit 451 -Week Four Ticket In:

Connecting to the Character (Pages 149 end of novel)
1. When Montag goes into the river (and starts paying attention to nature) He
felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left
the great sance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an
unreality that was frightening into a reality that as unreal because it was
new (140).
What are three ways his old life was like a performance, where he and others
played a part, but nobody really knew how to feel anything real?

2. Once Montag has escaped, he looks at the world and feels that the natural
world was all he wanted now. Some signs that the immense world would
accept him and give him the long time he needed to think all the things that
must be thought (143).
Do you ever give yourself time to really think about and reflect on things? Do
you believe one needs time to reflect? Why or why not? In what way can it be
hard to find time to think about all the things that must be thought?
3. Montag finishes the novel with a purpose in life. What is this purpose? How
important do you feel it is to have a purpose in life? Why?
4. What happens at the end of the novel that can serve as a warning to us about
our need to constantly be distracted?

Blog Entry #4:

Section 1: What is an insight the novel gives us about the importance of truly
understanding ourselves and our world? What suggestion does the novel provide
about how we can begin to think better?
Section 2: What is an area of your life to which this lesson could be applied? To
what extent do you think it would be useful to apply this lesson to your day-to-day
life?

HOUND KILLS THE WRONG MAN ON PAGE 149.

NOTES FOR FAHRENHEIT 451

He felt she was walking in a circle about him, turning him end for end, shaking him
quietly and emptying his pockets, without once moving herself (6). JUDGEMENT
Reactions to having others assess our identity and see us, more clearly, than we see
ourselves
I sometimes think drivers dont know what grass is, or flowers, because they never
see them slowly, she said. (9). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER DISTRACTIONS
Did you know that once billboards were only twenty feet long? But cars started
rushing by so quickly they had to stretch the advertising out so it would last . . . Bet
I know something else you dont. Theres dew on the grass in the morning. He
suddenly couldnt remember if he had known this or not and it made him quite
irritable (9). - SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Are you happy? she said. Am I what? he cried (10).
People were more often he searched for a simile, found one in his work torches,
blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other peoples faces take of you
and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling
thoughts (11).
Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no
rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow.
There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears, and her
eyes all glass, and breath going in and out, softly, faintly, in and out her nostrils,
and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came(13). SOCIAL MEDIA . . .
LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Sure, shell be okay. We got all the mean stuff right in our suitcase here, it cant get
at here now. As I said, you take out the old and put in the new and youre okay(15).
SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person,
was them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using
everyone elses coattails. How are you supposed to root for the home team when
you dont even have a program or know the names?(17). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE
MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS

They mailed me my part this morning. I sent in some boxtops. They write the script
with one part missing. Its a new idea. The homemaker, thats me, is the missing
part. When it comes time for the missing lines, they all look at me out of the three
walls and I say the lines (20). CONTROLLING IDENTITY and SOCIAL MEDIA . .
.DISTRACTIONS
I am very much in love! He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there
was no face. I am! Oh, please dont look that way. . . .Oh, now Ive upset you, I
can see I have . . . (22). CONTROLLING IDENTITY
Youre not like the others. Ive seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me.
When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. The
others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or
threaten me(23). IDENTITY
Beatty stood there looking at him steadily with his eyes, while his mouth opened
and began to laugh, very softly(28). CONTROLLING IDENTITY
Im antisocial, they say . . . Social to me means talking to you about things like
this . . . Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I
dont think its social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk,
do you? (29). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
People dont 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 (31). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE
MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Had he ever seen a fireman that didnt have black hair, black brows, a fiery face,
and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror images of
himself? (33). CONTROLLING IDENTITY
Wheres your common sense? None of these books agree with each other. Youve
been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel (38).
Wasnt there an old joke about the wife who talked so much on the telephone that
her desperate husband ran out to the nearest store and telephoned her to ask what
was for dinner? Well, then, why didnt he buy himself an audio-Seashell
broadcasting station and talk to his wife late at night, murmur, whisper, shout,
scream, yell? But what would he whisper, what would he yell? What could he
say?(42).
How did you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you? (44). SOCIAL
MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
No. The same girl. McClellan. McClellan. Run over by a car. Four days ago. Im not
sure. But I think shes dead. The family moved out anyway. I dont know. But I think
shes dead.
Youre not sure of it!
No, not sure. Pretty sure.
Why didnt you tell me sooner?

Forgot.
Four days ago!
I forgot all about it (47). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
She was simple-minded.
She was as rational as you and I, more so perhaps, and we burnt her (51).
CONTROLLING IDENTITY
Let you alone! Thats all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not
to be alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you
were really bothered? About something important, about something real? (52).
SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; theres
your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more (55). SOCIAL MEDIA . . .
LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers,
snatchers, flies, and swimmers, instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and
imaginative creators, the word intellectual, of course, became the swear word it
deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar (58). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE
MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Havent you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, arent they?
Dont we keep them moving, dont we give them fun? Thats all we live for, isnt it?
For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of
these (59). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
She didnt want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be
embarrassing. You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed,
if you keep at it(60). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didnt look
well. But my uncles says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden
underneath, might be they didnt want people sitting like that, doing nothing,
rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life (63).
He knows the answers. Hes right. Happiness is important. Fun is everything. And
yet I kept sitting there saying to myself, Im not happy, Im not happy (65). SOCIAL
MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel
drop by drop, there is a last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of
kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over (71).
When Faber is talking poetry to Montag, he says I dont talk things, sir, said Faber,
I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know Im alive (75). SOCIAL MEDIA . . .
LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS

There is a passage on page 79 where Montag is trying to concentrate, but cant

focus on the words in the books because of the advertising on the train. SOCIAL
MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
Nobody listens any more. I cant talk to the walls because theyre yelling at me. I
cant talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I
have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, itll make sense (82). SOCIAL
MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
FOR WRITERS CRAFT
The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can
get on a sheet of paper, the more literary you are. Thats my definition anyway.
Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run
a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies (83).
So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores on the
face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless,
expressionless (83). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
In explaining why he hasnt succumbed to this society, Faber tells Montag As you
see, my parlor here is nothing but four plaster walls (84). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE
MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
The world must reproduce, you know, the race must go on. Besides, they
sometimes look just like you, and thats nice (96). CONTROLLING IDENTITY
Silly words, silly words, silly awful hurting words, said Mrs. Bowles. Why do
people want to hurt people? Not enough hurt in the world, you got to tease people
with stuff like that (101). LYING (to themselves)
Speech away, whatll it be this time? Why dont you belch Shakespeare at me, you
fumbling snob? There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am so armd so
strong in honesty that they pass me as an idle wind, which I respect not! Hows
that? Go ahead now, you second-hand litterateur, pull the trigger (119). He
knows that holding a mirror to Montag will force Montag to kill him. CONTROLLING
IDENTITY AND LYING
I feel like Im alive for the first time in years, said Faber. I feel Im doing what I
shouldve done a lifetime ago. For a little while Im not afraid. Maybe its because
Im doing the right thing at last (131).
LYING he has been lying to himself for a while. Also, this could relate to HOW to
become less distracted.

When he goes into the river (and starts paying attention to nature) He felt as if he
had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great sance

and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was
frightening into a reality that as unreal because it was new (140). SOCIAL
MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER - DISTRACTIONS
That was all he wanted now. Some signs that the immense world would accept him
and give him the long time he needed to think all the things that must be thought
(143). Controlling Identity and (maybe) Social Media how his immersion in the
present and the physical world brings him back to himself and brings back his ability
to focus.
Page 144 A very detailed description of the landscape. He stood breathing, and
the more he breathed the land in, the more he was filled up with all the details of
the land. He was not empty. There was more than enough here to fill him. There
would always be more than enough (144). See comment above
There was a silence gathered all about that fire and the silence was in the mens
faces, and time was there, time enough to sit by this rusting track under the trees
and look at the world and turn it over with the eyes . . . (146). See comment
above
Page 149 The Hound kills someone else that they call Montag. Right now some
poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Dont think the police dont know
the queer habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it,
or for reasons of insomnia. Anyway, the police have had him charted for months,
years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns
out, its very usable indeed. It saves face (148). SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING
FASTER DISTRACTIONS Controlling Identity AND LYING - - - - -A TRIPLE THREAT!!!
. . . you cant make people listen. They have to come round in their own time,
wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them (153).
The difference between a man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the
touching, he said. The lawn cutter might just as well have not been there at all; the
gardener will be there a lifetime (157).
When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said,
someday it will come in and get us, for we will have forgotten how terrible and real
it can be (157).
We know all the damn silly things weve done for a thousand years and as long as
we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday well stop
making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them (163).
SOCIAL MEDIA . . . LIFE MOVING FASTER DISTRACTIONS.

LYING

There are a number of examples of people lying Montag to Beatty, Montag to

Clarisse. As well, people are also lying to themselves (Montag, Millie (as is
evidenced by her suicide), Beatty (he wants to commit suicide but doesnt tell this
Montag) and Millies friends the poems he reads bring out visceral, honest
reactions) but they arent always aware of it.