Andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451

He perceives his crime to be automatic and observes that it involved no thought on his part, that his hands committed the crime on their own. 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. Mildred tells him the family moved away and that she thinks Clarisse was hit by a car and killed. Montag is sick the next morning, and the omnipresent stink of kerosene makes him vomit. He tells Mildred about burning the old woman and asks her if she would mind if he gave up his job for a while.

The argument ends when they see Captain Beatty coming up the front walk. This reveals that Montag lacks awareness of his true motivations and that some unconscious force is overpowering his conscious, rational self. Nonetheless, after stealing the book Montag experiences an intense, disorienting fear. He tries to draw some emotional support from his wife, seeking desperately to remember where they first met.

This bit of information takes on a symbolic significance for him as he realizes that he does not truly feel connected to her. He is moved to tears only when he realizes he would not cry if Mildred overdosed again and died—the true tragedy in his life is the lack of any real feeling. Montag blames the TV walls and various other bits of technological distraction for separating Mildred from him and killing or at least distorting her brain.

Mildred spends all of her time within her three TV walls and pushes Montag to get her a fourth which, presumably, would box her in completely. Her life of watching television has destroyed her attention span, and now she can hardly even comprehend what is going on in the programs she watches. He imagines it outside his window lying in wait for him.

Later we learn that it really has been sent to stalk him. However, as Faber later points out, the problem is more fundamental and cannot be solved simply by ending book burning. Part of the story is that photography, film, and television made it possible to present information in a quickly digestible, visual form, which made the slower, more reflective practice of reading books less popular.

Beatty pretends not to notice and goes on talking. Beatty urges Montag not to overlook how important he and his fellow firemen are to the happiness of the world. He tells him that every fireman sooner or later becomes curious about books; because he has read some himself, he can assert that they are useless and contradictory. Montag asks what would happen if a fireman accidentally took a book home with him, and Beatty says that he would be allowed to keep it for twenty-four or forty-eight hours, but that the other firemen would then come to burn it if he had not already done so himself.

Beatty gets up to leave and asks if Montag will come in to work later. Montag tells him that he may, but he secretly resolves never to go again. After Beatty leaves, Montag tells Mildred that he no longer wants to work at the fire station and shows her a secret stock of about twenty books he has been hiding in the ventilator. In a panic, she tries to burn them, but he stops her.

He wants to look at them at least once, and he needs her help. He searches for a reason for his unhappiness in the books, which he has apparently been stealing for some time. Mildred is frightened of them, but Montag is determined to involve her in his search, and he asks for fortyeight hours of support from her to look through the books in hopes of finding something valuable that they can share with others.

Later it is revealed that the Mechanical Hound was the second visitor. Analysis We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal. A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. In his explication of the history of book burning, Beatty equates deep thought with sadness, which he rejects as categorically evil.

The immediacy of pleasure in this bookless society eliminates thought and, with it, the ability to express sadness, which is why people like Mildred carry around vast amounts of suppressed pain. According to Beatty, mass censorship began with various special-interest groups and minorities clamoring against material they considered offensive, as well as a shrinking attention span in the general populace.

As a result, books and ideas were condensed further and further until they were little more than a series of sound bites; they were ultimately eliminated altogether in favor of other, more superficial, sensory-stimulating media. Mass production called for uniformity and effectively eliminated the variance once found in books. Most people stopped reading books long before they were ever burned.

His speech is filled with irony and sarcasm, and his description of reading strikes the reader as passionate and nostalgic. His championing of book burning, on the other hand, has a perfunctory, insincere tone. People who are not born equal are made equal. Funerals are eliminated because they are a source of unhappiness, death is forgotten as soon as it occurs, and bodies are unceremoniously incinerated.

In this society, books are as morbid as corpses, because they contain dead thoughts by dead authors. This society idolizes fire, which represents the easy cleanliness of destruction. He prefers the life of instant pleasure. With this confiding air, Beatty tries to make Montag believe that firemen are essential to the andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451 of the world.

The Mechanical Hound comes and sniffs at the door. Montag speculates about what it was that made Clarisse so unique. Mildred refuses to talk about someone who is dead and complains that she prefers the people and the pretty colors on her TV walls to books. Montag feels that books must somehow be able to help him out of his ignorance, but he does not understand what he is reading and decides that he must find a teacher.

He thinks back to an afternoon a year before when he met an old English professor named Faber in the park. It was apparent that Faber had been reading a book of poetry before Montag arrived. The professor had tried to hide the book and run away, but after Montag reassured him that he was safe, they talked, and Faber gave him his address and phone number.

He asks him how many copies of the Bible, Shakespeare, or Plato are left in the country. Faber, who thinks Montag is trying to trap him, says none are left and hangs up the phone. Montag goes back to his pile of books and realizes that he took from the old woman what may be the last copy of the Bible in existence. He considers turning in a substitute to Beatty who knows he has at least one bookbut he realizes that if Beatty knows which book he took, the chief will guess that he has a whole library if he gives him a different book.

He decides to have a duplicate made before that andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451. Mildred tells him that some of her friends are coming over to watch TV with her. She dismisses his question. The astonished passengers start to call a guard, but Montag gets off at the next stop. Faber says that Montag does not know the real reason for his unhappiness and is only guessing that it has something to do with books, since they are the only things he knows for sure are gone.

The same meaning could be included in existing media like television and radio, but people no longer demand it. Faber compares their superficial society to flowers trying to live on flowers instead of on good, substantive dirt: people are unwilling to accept the basic realities and unpleasant aspects of life. Do you know why books such as this are so important?

Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. Faber says that people need quality information, the leisure to digest it, and the freedom to act on what they learn. Books at least allow the reader to put them down, giving one time to think and reason about the information they contain.

Montag suggests planting books in the homes of firemen to discredit the profession and see the firehouses burn. Faber says they just need to be patient, since the coming war will eventually mean the death of the TV families. Montag concludes that they could use that as a chance to bring books back. Montag bullies Faber out of his cowardice by tearing pages out of the precious Bible one by one, and Faber finally agrees to help, revealing that he knows someone with a printing press who used to print his college newspaper.

Montag decides to risk giving Beatty a substitute book, and Faber agrees to see his printer friend. This denial is related to the widespread ignorance of history and fear of books, because history and books connect readers to the dead. In contrast, Montag feels a kind of wonder that the books written by dead people somehow remind him of Clarisse.

He openly accepts and ponders death, telling Faber that his wife is dying and that a friend of his is already dead, along with someone who might have been a friend meaning the old woman. Mildred still does not see any possible advantage in reading and is angered by the danger Montag puts her in, asking if she is not more important than a Bible.

Montag hopes that reading will help him understand the mistakes that have led the world into two atomic wars since and that have made the rest of the world hate his country for its narcissistic hedonism. Faber becomes a more important character in this section. This theme of deeper meanings being necessary for life is central to the book.

And although Montag knew he had a book in his pocket, Faber gave him his address anyway, allowing Montag to choose whether to befriend him or turn him in. When Montag visits Faber, he tells the professor that he just wants someone to listen to him talk until he starts to make sense. He acknowledges his own ignorance, which demonstrates his increasing self-awareness, and hopes to learn from Faber.

Although Faber is a strong moral voice in the novel, his selfprofessed flaw of cowardice is also introduced in this section. He is reluctant to risk helping Montag and finally agrees to do so only by means of his audio transmitter, hiding behind this device while Montag risks his life. He expresses concern that Beatty will be able to persuade him to return to his former life.

The sand is symbolic of the tangible truth Montag seeks and the sieve of the human mind seeking truth. Faber reads to him from the Book of Job over the two-way radio in his ear. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, arrive and promptly disappear into the TV andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451. Montag turns off the TV walls and tries to engage the three women in conversation.

They reluctantly oblige him, but he becomes angry when they describe how they voted in the last presidential election, based solely on the physical appearance and other superficial qualities of the candidates. Their detached and cynical references to their families and the impending war angers him further. Mildred quickly concocts a lie, explaining that a fireman is allowed to bring home one book a year to show to his family and prove what nonsense books are.

Faber orders Montag to take the escape route Mildred has provided by agreeing with her. Bowles declares the cause to be the evil, emotional messiness of poetry. She denounces Montag for reading it. He yells at Mrs. Bowles to go home and think about her empty life, and both women leave. Mildred disappears into the bedroom. Montag discovers that she has been burning the books one by one, and he rehides them in the backyard.

Faber tells him that he would agree if there were no war and all was right with the world, but that those realities call for attention. Montag hands his book over to Beatty, who throws it into the trashcan without even looking at the title and welcomes him back after his period of folly. Beatty browbeats Montag with a storm of literary quotations to confuse him and convince him that books are better burned than read.

Montag is so afraid of making a mistake with Beatty that he cannot move his feet. Faber tells him not to be afraid of mistakes, as they sharpen the mind. An alarm comes through, and Beatty glances at the address and takes the wheel of the fire engine. They arrive at their destination, and Montag sees that it is his own house. First, Faber reads from the Book of Job, a part of the Bible in which God and Satan make a wager about whether Job will remain faithful to God when subjected to terrible afflictions.

Clearly, Faber encourages Montag to endure despite the difficulty of his undertaking. The two women seem artificial, superficial, and empty to Montag. The conversation that Montag forces them to have reveals their lack of concern about the coming war, the pervasiveness and casual treatment of suicide in their society, and the deplorable state of family ethics.

They remind him of icons he once saw in a church and did not understand; they seem strange and meaningless to him. Finally, in a third instance of religious imagery, Faber describes himself as water and Montag as fire, claiming that the merging of the two will produce wine. Montag longs to confirm his own identity through a similar selftransformation.

He hopes that when he becomes this new self, he will be able to look back and understand the man he used to be. After only a short time with the audio transmitter in his ear, Montag feels that he has known Faber a lifetime and that Faber has actually become a part of him. Here again, Bradbury illustrates the contradictory nature of technology—it is both positive and negative, simultaneously beneficial and manipulative.

Bradbury further develops the opposition between Faber and Beatty in this section. When Montag returns to the fire station, Beatty spouts learned quotations like mad and uses literature to justify banning literature. Here he lets Montag make his own decision and stops ordering him around. Mildred rushes out of the house with a suitcase and is driven away in a taxi, and Montag realizes she must have called in the alarm.

Beatty orders Montag to burn the house by himself with his flamethrower and warns that the Hound is on the watch for him if he tries to escape. Montag burns everything, and when he is finished, Beatty places him under arrest. Beatty sees that Montag is listening to something and strikes him on the head. After Beatty eggs him on with more literary quotations, his last a quote from Julius Caesar, Montag turns his flamethrower on Beatty and burns him to a crisp.

The other firemen do not move, and he knocks them out. Montag stumbles away on his numb leg. He goes to where he hid the books in his backyard and finds four that Mildred missed. He hears sirens approaching and tries to continue down the alley, but he falls and begins to sob. He forces himself to rise and runs until the numbness leaves his leg.

Montag puts a regular Seashell radio in his ear and hears a police alert warning people to be on the lookout for him, that he is alone and on foot. He finds a gas station and washes the soot off his face so he will look less suspicious. He hears on the radio that war has been declared. He starts to cross a wide street and is nearly hit by a car speeding toward him.

Louis sometime in the future, where he is going to meet a retired printer. Faber turns on the TV news, and they hear that a new Mechanical Hound, followed by a helicopter camera crew, has been sent out after Montag. Faber plans to take a bus out of the city to visit his printer friend as soon as possible. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences.

Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical. Montag does not feel particularly angry at her, however; his feelings for her are only pity and regret. This part of the novel is dominated by the final confrontation between Montag and Beatty. Montag remains emotionally detached in this section. He enjoys burning his own house as much as he enjoyed burning those of others, and he begins to agree with Beatty that fire is removing his problems.

He imagines Mildred and his whole previous life under the ashes, and feels that he is really far away and that his body is dead. Beatty is described as no longer human and no longer known to Montag when he catches fire. Again, like so many other things in the novel, fire has two contradictory meanings at once. Murder is, after all, a far worse crime than book burning.

Montag is not as different from Mildred, Beatty, and others as he thinks. In this section, he confides to Faber that he has been going around all his life doing one thing and feeling another, an unconscious dualism that resembles the conflicted psyches of Mildred and Beatty. Also, when he and Faber watch the sensationalist TV news coverage of his escape and the chase, the possibility of watching the unfolding drama on TV fascinates Montag, and he finds all the glitz and tabloid glamour he has inspired somewhat flattering.

If he is killed on TV, he wonders if he could sum up his whole life in a few words in the brief moments before his death so as to make an impact on the people watching. Montag has not yet escaped from the culture against which he revolts—he is still concerned, even in his most dire moment, with surface appearances, fame, and sensationalism. Literally everybody is watching the televised chase.

He reaches the river just as the announcer counts ten and all the doors in the neighborhood start to open. To keep the Hound from picking up his scent, he wades into the river and drifts away with the current. He avoids the searchlights of the police helicopters, and then sees them turn and fly away. He washes ashore in the countryside. Stepping out of the river, he is overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of nature.

He finds the railroad track and follows it. As he walks, he senses strongly that Clarisse once walked there, too. The track leads him to a fire with five men sitting around it. The leader of the men sees him in the shadows and invites him to join them, introducing himself as Granger. Granger reveals a portable TV set and tells him that they have been watching the chase and expecting him to come.

The men at the fire, though homeless, are surprisingly neat and clean, and have considerable technology. Granger gives Montag a bottle of colorless fluid to drink and explains that it will change the chemical index of his perspiration so the Hound will not be able to find him.

Andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451

Granger tells him the search has continued in the opposite direction and that the police will be looking for a scapegoat to save themselves from the humiliation of losing their prey. The men gather around the TV to watch as the camera zooms in on a man walking down the street, smoking a cigarette. The announcer identifies this man as Montag.

The Hound appears and pounces on him, and the announcer declares that Montag is dead and a crime against society has been avenged. The homeless men reflect that the police probably chose the man to be their scapegoat because of his habit of walking by himself—clearly a dangerous and antisocial habit. Analysis The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time.

Time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen and the sun burnt Time, that meant that everything burnt! This latter andrew jackson biography sparknotes fahrenheit 451 effectively pits the entire city against Montag and creates a definite time factor as opposed to the progress of the Hound, which is an undetermined distance away from Montag.

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Hamlet Character Profiles Top 10 Quotes. Macbeth Character Profiles Top 10 Quotes. Othello Character Profiles Top 10 Quotes. Youtube Twitter Facebook Pinterest. About Us Novelguide. Our Networks novelguide. The novel begins with a graphic description of the pleasure and satisfaction experienced by Montag as he burns a house and the collection of books it once concealed.

Later, as he walks home, he encounters a beautiful young woman who disturbs him with probing questions about happiness. Over the next week, Montag has regular encounters her, causing him to question who he is and what he does. At the end of that week, he is disturbed to discover that the woman, along with the rest of her family, has disappeared.

Montag's disquiet increases when he participates in a burning at the home of an elderly woman who, much to the surprise of Montag and his fellow firemen, watches calmly as they douse her home and precious books with kerosene and then lights a match, setting herself on fire as well. During the confusion of this burning, Montag conceals a book under his coat, later concealing it at home as well.

After a troubled night's sleep that results in him absenting himself from work, Montag is visited by his captain who, while reminding him that books are dangerous, implies that any fireman who finds himself curious about what books are actually like can have one for as long as twenty four hours, but it must eventually be burned. Meanwhile, Montag's wife discovers the concealed book, which narration reveals is a Bible.

Montag later confesses that he has a concealed collection of books, eventually convincing his wife who is worried that their home will be destroyed if anyone finds out what they've got to read with him. She is unable, or unwilling, to get any meaning out of the books, eventually returning her attention to the house's expensive, addictive entertainment system.

Meanwhile, Montag desperately memorizes verses from the Bible and also makes contact with a man with whom he had once had an unguarded conversation about books, the elderly Professor Faber. Together, the two men begin to plan a subversive attack on the book-burning system. When he gets home after his conversation with Faber, Montag discovers that his wife has invited friends to join her for an evening of entertainment.

Montag's frustration with the superficiality and violence of that entertainment leads him to confront his wife and her friends with a reading of poetry. This causes upset in the friends, who both leave.