Fahrenheit 451pp. 91 - 110

1)Give a very short (1-3 sentence) summary of the two main scenes in this section. The first scene was at home in the living room and the second scene was in the fire house with Beatty.

In the first major scene Montag over hears Mildred and her friends conversation about their husbands fighting in the war and how they don’t really care, there husbands will be alright, etc. Montag gets angry about what they’re saying and burst out in rage. He reads them a poem, and one of the women begins to cry. Mildred insists that it was a joke and they should have a party to make up for Montag’s wild behavior, but the other women want to leave. So, Montag yells at them to “Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it?”

In the second scene Beatty is telling Montag about a “dream” he had. In the dream Montag and Beatty where arguing, saying quotes from different books. What Beatty was trying to do was confuse Montag, making sure he would be on his side with the rest of the firemen. Luckily Faber was there to guide Montag through it. The alarm bell rang and they all went out to burn a house. They pull up at the house and Montag realizes it’s his own house he is about to burn.

2) Find a sentence or two that has strong adjectives and/or verbs. Quote the book and explain why these are strong descriptive words and why they are effective. How do they appeal to the senses? What mental images do they invoke?

“The faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for along time, trying to be of that religion, enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and blood-ruby lips.”
I thought this quote was a great example of strong descriptive writing. When they describe the people in the church you can just imagine their perfect white eyes staring at you and their bright red lips. When Montag talked about the “raw incense and special dust of the place” I could imagine him taking in deep breaths trying to get enough of the “special dust” as possible.