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SCREW YOUR FLICKY.

aww i missed something....

I miss everything. =/

I had to read:

-Beowulf
-The Canterbury Tales (Oh, God...Chaucer)
-Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
-Le Morte d'Arthur

That's what I can remember. It was for AP Lit/Comp.

Fahrenheit 451 takes place in an unspecified future time in a hedonistic anti-intellectual America that has completely abandoned self-control, filled with lawlessness in the streets, from teenagers crashing cars into people to firemen at Montag's station who set their mechanical hound to hunt various animals for the simple and grotesque pleasure of watching them die. Anyone caught reading books is, at the minimum, confined to a mental hospital while the books are burned. Illegal books mainly include famous works of literature, such as Walt Whitman and William Faulkner, as well as The Bible, and all historical texts.

One night returning from his job, fireman Guy Montag meets his new neighbor Clarisse McClellan, whose free-thinking ideals and liberating spirit force him to question his life, his ideals, and his own perceived happiness. Later in the book it is assumed that Clarisse had been killed in a car accident, or at the very least is dead.

After meeting Clarisse, he returns home to find his wife Mildred (who sleeps in a separate bed) asleep, with an empty bottle of sleeping pills next to her bed. He calls for medical help, and two technicians respond, who proceed to suck out Mildred's blood with a machine and insert new blood into her. The technicians' utter disregard for Mildred forces Montag to question the state of society.

In the following days, while ransacking the book-filled house of an old woman before the inevitable burning, Montag accidentally reads a line in one of her books: "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine." This prompts him to steal one of the books. The woman refuses to leave her house and her books, choosing instead to light a match she had concealed from the firemen's view, prematurely igniting the kerosene and martyring herself. This disturbs Montag, and he wonders why someone would die for mere books.

Jarred by the woman's suicide, Montag calls in sick, and receives a visit from his fire chief Captain Beatty, who explains to him the political and social causes which underlie the work they perform. Captain Beatty claims that society, in its search for happiness, and an attempt to minimize cultural offenses through political correctness, brought about the suppression of literature as an act of self-censorship and that the government merely took advantage of the situation. Beatty adds that all firemen eventually steal a book out of curiosity, but all would be well if the book is turned in within 24 hours. Montag argues with his wife, Mildred, over the book, showing his growing disgust for her and for his society.

It is revealed that Montag has, over the course of a year, hidden dozens of books in the ventilation shafts of his own house, and he tries to memorize them to preserve their contents, but becomes frustrated that the words seem to simply fall away from his memory. He then remembers a man he had met at one time: Faber, a former English professor. Montag seeks Faber's help, and Faber begins teaching Montag about the vagaries and ambiguities but overall importance of literature in its attempt to explain human existence. He also gives Montag a green bullet-shaped ear-piece so that Faber can offer guidance throughout his daily activities.

During a card game at the fire house, Beatty tells Montag he had a dream about him, and relates the literary argument he says they had in his dream. Beatty quotes many books and shows an amazing knowledge of literature to prove to Montag the confusing messages in books. Then follows another call to arms; Beatty theatrically leads the crew to Montag's own home. He reveals that he knew all along of Montag's books, and orders Montag to destroy the house. Montag sees Mildred, who had betrayed his secret, moving away from the house and sets to work burning their home, but Montag is not content destroying the books. He burns the televisions, beds and other emblems of his past life. When Beatty finds Faber's earpiece, he threatens to track Faber down. Montag turns the flamethrower on Beatty, killing him, and then knocks out two other firemen and is soon a fugitive for these crimes. When the fire house's mechanical hound goes after him, he turns the flamethrower on it, destroying it.

He flees to Faber's house, with another fire house's mechanical hound and television network helicopters in hot pursuit. The newscasters hope to document his escape as a spectacle, and distract the people from the oncoming threat of war, a threat that has been foreshadowed throughout the book. Faber tells Montag of vagabond book-lovers in the countryside. Montag escapes, to a local river, floats downstream and meets a group of older men who, to Montag's astonishment, have memorized entire books, preserving them orally until books are allowed again. They burn the books they read to prevent discovery, retaining the verbatim content (and possibly valid interpretations) in their minds. The group leader, Granger, discusses the legendary phoenix and its endless cycle of long life, death in flames, and rebirth, adding the phoenix must have some relation of mankind, constantly going back to its cycle of making mistakes, and not learning from the past. He comments that man can learn, as opposed to the doomed phoenix.

Meanwhile, the television network helicopters surround another man in frustration, and the hound is ordered to attack him. The television audience thinks that Montag has died, but he is actually safe.

The war begins. Montag watches helplessly as jet bombers fly overhead and attack the city with nuclear weapons. His wife, Mildred, likely dies, though Faber is assumed to have left the city. It is implied that more cities across the country have been incinerated as well, a bitter irony that the world that sought to burn thought, is burned itself. At the moment of the explosion, the stress and emotion of seeing the city burned causes a key phrase from the Bible to emerge from the depths of Montag's memory.

The novel is concluded with a shocking but slightly optimistic tone. It is suggested that the society Montag knew has almost completely collapsed and a new society must be built from the ashes. Whether this new society will meet the same fate is unknown, but it is implied that the book people will begin to build mirror factories (a literary allusion)(mirrors are a metaphor for books) to show people who they are, what they have become, and how they can change with time and knowledge.



Fahrenheit 451, quick overlook of the story. Is it right?

I've read both. I recommend reading Fahrenheit 451 later, if you get the chance, actually.