Answer to Question #312283 in English for Kelsey Jand

Question

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Study Guide

Directions: Answer these study guide questions as you read with as much depth as possible. Doing so will force you to stop and think about what is happening in the story and why. These notes are a more structured form of annotation. 

Chronological Reading Comprehension Questions:

1. How do Mildred’s friends react to the poem Montag reads? Why might Bradbury have chosen this particular poem? Why do you think the women react so strongly?
2. When Montag returns to work, what is the first call he answers? Who turned him in? Does this surprise you?
3. What exactly happens between Montag and Beatty? Is Montag guilty of a violent crime? Why or why not? What does he think? 
4. What does the mechanical hound symbolically represent?  Explain.

Answer 1

1. How do Mildred’s friends react to the poem Montag reads? Why might Bradbury have chosen this particular poem? Why do you think the women react so strongly?

When Guy Montag reads the poem to the ladies, the two of them have kind of different responses. One of them, Clara Phelps, bursts into tears. She has no idea why she's crying, but she can't stop. The other friend, Mrs. Bowles, is trying to comfort Mrs. Phelps. At the same time, she is getting really angry at Montag. She is telling him how nasty poetry is because of the fact that it makes people feel bad (the way Clara is right then).

2.When Montag returns to work, what is the first call he answers? Who turned him in? Does this surprise you?

Montag goes home and hides the book he has stolen under his pillow. In bed, Mildred suddenly seems very strange and unfamiliar to him as she babbles on about the TV and her TV “family.” He gets into his own bed, which is separate from his wife’s. He asks her where they first met ten years ago, but neither of them can remember. Mildred gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom to take some sleeping pills, and Montag tries to count the number of times he hears her swallow and wonders if she will forget later and take more. He feels terribly empty and concludes that the TV walls stand between him and his wife. He thinks about her TV “family,” with its empty dramas of tenuous connections and transient, sensational images. He tells Mildred he hasn’t seen Clarisse for four days and asks if she knows what happened to her. Mildred tells him the family moved away and that she thinks Clarisse was hit by a car and killed.

3.What exactly happens between Montag and Beatty? Is Montag guilty of a violent crime? Why or why not? What does he think? 

The first conflict is when he starts to read books. In society, books are banned, yet Montag goes against society and reads them anyway. The second conflict is when Montag kills Beatty. Montag kills Beatty because Montag doesn't want beatty to find faber and kill him.

4.What does the mechanical hound symbolically represent? Explain.

The Hound represents government control and manipulation of technology. Originally, dogs served as the rescuers for firemen. They were given the job of sniffing out the injured or weak.