Fahrenheit 451-Part Three, Burning Bright

[Joanie]

There was so much tension in the last part of the book, I felt like I couldn't read it fast enough. I'm a little confused on a few things about the war, not sure if I missed something or if some things just weren't clearly stated (like who were they at war with?) I really loved this book and Bradbury's descriptions.

[Rebecca]

Blech -- LOL, Joanie, this is where our paths diverged! I liked the book reasonably well through the second chapter, but this last part was just gobbledygook. He held a thread of plot going, but it seemed much more an exercise in ego. It was like reading On The Road again -- pointless story attempting to cover up for the author wanting to show how "deep" he is.

But then maybe I'm biased from having read his introduction, in which he went on and on about the creative process behind the book, including all these self-important phrases about the intensity required and blah, blah, blah. I wanted to tell him to get over himself.

All disgust aside, I do think that he intentionally skipped over the war plot so as to focus on the internal dialogue, the independent thought. I don't think it was well handled; it was an important enough plot point to deserve being fleshed out more. At least give us some idea of what actually happened at the end -- did they get a nuclear blast or what? Did any of them live through it, or do we now have souls free-floating around, thinking their lofty thoughts about reconstructing books for the world? There were lots of details left out; for most of the book I thought they were in Britain for some reason.

I would guess it was done for several reasons; to not pinpoint it would allow the story to remain fresh and apply to more people and areas. And of course, the ever-popular "I'm too smart and metaphysical to be bothered relating to the little people and their pedestrain minds." But again, bias ;)

Here's what I did love: the society of hoboes, each carrying around parts of precious works of literature in their heads for the future, with great hope and belief that someday civilization would come to its senses and rediscover the need to think. That was a fantastic culmination of Montag's whole journey for me.

And I applaud Bradbury's restraint in NOT saying one of them was remembering 451 for the collection. I'm sure it was a struggle for him. LOL

[Joanie]

LOL Rebecca, I did struggle with the end too-I just didn't want to give too much away I guess. It was all so tense but then it felt kind of anti-climatic to me. Too much talking and not enough action. He built up so much tension and then it kind of fizzled out for me.

I did really like the part about the media coverage of the chase though and them saying they caught Montag when really he was out running free. Clearly the it was more important for them to portray the authorities as being in control than to really catch the "criminal."

I too liked the idea of people memorizing books so that one day they can be written down again. The movie handles this differntly but just as interesting really-there is even a man who is dying and passing his book on to a little girl so she can keep it alive. I think I was in junior high when I saw the movie so I'm fuzzy on the details but that part really stuck with me.

The whole "the war started, now it's over" bugged me. I do think it was an atomic bomb, didn't they say there had been several dropped? I kept thinking that they survived because they were away from the city and the buildings and therefore not buried under anything that got destroyed. I know it wouldn't make sense that you'd survive a blast because you were out in the open but that that's what it seemed to me. Now they could start over because everything was destroyed. I also wondered if this had happened before, where books were done away with, then made legal again, then destroyed again.

Even though I was bugged by the last bit I did really like the book. I didn't have an introduction in my copy, just an afterword and a coda. Maybe that's why I wasn't as biased :-)

[Shannon]

Joanie, I agree it was a bit anti-climatic for me too. I guess I was waiting for an "oh my gosh" moment - like in Life of Pi The build up was great and I really enjoyed the craziness of no one reading and thinking. Everyone was so afraid of pain and discormfort that they had no happiness. No wonder so many people tried killing themselves.
On a side note, the part about having children really made me laugh. Especially since scheduling caesarians is so popular now.

[Rebecca]

Shannon, I had briefly forgotten about that -- I was so amused by that prescient tidbit about the future of childbirth. So true!

I will (grudgingly haha) admit that he had some eerie accuracy going on with regard to future customs.

[Sarah]

I agree that the end was a little confusing and anti-climactic. But there were a couple of parts I really liked. I liked the way Guy seemed to think that his hands had a mind of their own, and how Bradbury carried that out throughout the book. They moved and acted independently of his will from when he stole the book at the old woman's house all the way up until he killed Beatty.

I also loved this quote: He hadn't known fire could look this way. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take.

I thought it was interesting in the afterword how he gave a scene showing Beatty's extensive library, and how he said it wasn't a crime to own books, it was just a crime to read them.

[Liz]

Overall I liked most of the book but I feel like so many things were left just hanging. I wanted to know exactly what was up with Clarisse and why Montag's wife tried to committ suicide. Also why the war happened??? I have to many questions.

[Courtney]

I found this comment in part two helpful in the war plot in part three:

"What about Clarisse McClellan, where do we look for her? The morgue Listen!"

"The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky over the house, gasping, murmuring, whistling like an immense, invisible fan, circling in emptiness."

"Jesus God. . . . Every hour so many damn things up in the sky! How in the hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn't someone want to talk about it! We've started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we're having so much fun at home that we've forgotten the world?"

I think part of Bradbury's point, although I agree he handles it with less dexterity than earlier themes, is that people's desire for happiness and simplicity is so strong that they are oblivious to these apocalyptic events, perhaps because, in a world without content and meaning, people do not even know how to interpret the clues until the bomb hits their city.

I LOVED the traveling PhD hobos each becoming the books they carried for the good of the future. I felt Capra beaming out at me from this bit and felt truly inspired. Granger was so Henry Fonda in "Grapes of Wrath" or Coop in "Meet John Doe" that I wanted to stand and salute.

I especially loved this bit:

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . . A child or a book or a painting or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at the tree or the flower you planted, you're there. . . . It doesn't matter what you do . . . so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away."

This section was certainly the weakest, but it had so many gems, I could handle the flaws.

[Courtney]

So the title of this section is called "Burning Bright," which got me thinking of the Blake poem "The Tyger" from "Songs of Experience." I find it incredible applicable here. See what you think:

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?"

According to our dear friends at Wikipedia:

"The Tyger" was published as a part of Songs of Experience and the poem can also be seen as dealing with the growing knowledge of the world as one ages. . . . "The Tyger" is set in the industrialized modernity [and] reflects a knowledge that evil exists in the world and that benevolence can sometimes appear invisible.

"The Tyger" may also be read as introspection by the mature artist. Blake looks in wonder that the author might be so audacious as to set out to create a powerful poem and to compare his own work to God's creative process. By describing the challenge he faces, Blake acknowledges both his pride in his craft and the fundamental mystery of composition, how does the artist create?

The poem both wonders at the creation of the powerful and dangerous animal and stands astonished at the risks taken by the artist attempting this expression. His question "did he who made the Lamb make thee?" recalls that the same person who penned the simple, humble hymn "The Lamb" was also the creator of "The Tyger" and highlights the difference between the innocent youth and experienced maturity of the poet.

I am still digesting this bit. . .

[Dottie]

I thought the war was purpsoely under utilized as the walls were just entertainment and "busy" work to occupy minds and details of wars and anything unpleasnat were not usually a part of the content fed into the walls -- that was another part of life which was not talked about and certainly never discussed or protested -- protests? Not in this society. They don't even think for themselves. When Montag read the poem earlier -- I think the one woman responded to it as she did because she recognized the rift between her life and what it supposedly was like. Somehow the poem spoke to her. The others seemed untouched even when he threw the obvious contrast of the lives they said they had with the reality of what they had lived. I thought the point was simoply that these nuclear wars were being fought and won -- though that goes against what we know and have lived with the constant threat of ever since and fear in the growth of use of nuclear power in other forms in commerce.

As to the hobo community -- I found it hopeful and also frightening to contemplate -- as stated -- if for some reason the turn around didn't happen and some books were lost then they would be lost. And yet, we do lose books over centuries as civilizations burned librarie through history and natural disasters wiped out others and simple natural distintegration cant' be fought forever. What we have in our minds though came from the minds of tohers down through time -- wide ranging reading tucks knowledge into minds. Minds hold the knowledge and not only from books.

[Sera]

I'm very surprised as to how much I enjoyed this book. The book took an odd turn at this point, but what are the alternatives? Should Montag have been caught and killed? He wasn't in a position to take on the government and to be a hero, and so Bradbury might have been trying to give us a hopeful ending of where he was not alone with his thoughts and his feelings. Throughout the book, Montag feels lonely and isolated. Mildred has her "family" and that's all that she needs. Farber becomes an instant friend and someone who helps Montag. To me, the ending partially represented that when things are wrong, that there are many people who feel that way about it. We often have more in common than we think, but throughout the world, many countries are dominated by small groups of people.

The tone of his book reminded me alot of The Road by Cormac McCarthy. They are two very different stories, but both have the same feeling about how disturbing the world might actually be in the future.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

I'm so surprised so many of you thought the writing dropped off in this third section. I thought it was really well done to demonstrate the tenuousness of stepping out on one's own and beginning that walk toward destiny. It's fraught with misgivings and disillusionment, but also determination and hope.

In taking what he learned in such a compacted period of time, he went ahead and leapt - in great peril with possible fatal consequences. In his case, taking that step was mandatory to live, but still each proceeding step was not. The irony is that in walking away from all that was familiar, all that he knew... in running from his life, he gained it. Had he stayed or tarried, he would have died as well. What a great lesson for those of us who waver in our decisions and falter in being sure we are on the right path. Just follow it to the next if not... it could save your life.

And in turn, he turned around to hopefully help those that survived to find a new sort of life. That's the beauty of it.

Here are some really powerful quotes... Beatty is speaking of the beauty of fire when he says, "It's perpetual motion: it's the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on it'd burn our lifetimes out." He continues, "It's real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets to burdensome, then into the furnace with it." Isn't that part of today's pop psychology? Just think it right, then all will be well. Goodness will come to you. Throw away the "negative" things and move on. Believe and all your dreams will come true. I'm just saying...

This here is just a damned fine quote: "He tried to thing about the vacuum upon which the nothingness had performed, but he could not."

I loved how Montag described his facing being caught and knowing he was about to loose everything he knew as an earthquake coming with fire and leveling everything - his wife and his entire life. How the shaking was actually within him. Just so captivating, this description.

"How many times can a man go down and still be alive. I can't breathe."

The description of the hound was incredible as well. "The hound did not touch the world. It carried its silence with it, so you could feel the silence building up a pressure behind you all across town." And, too, isn't it interesting that it is in the form of a dog... something that is so beloved, "man's best friend," that comes to hunt him down? I don't think that is a coincidence. Like love ran cold.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

His journey on the river, too, is so vital. What do we associate with "river?" River of life. Flowing, life-giving, refreshing, movement. Hmm. Do you suppose it was a mistake he landed in that?? Bradbury's description of it was remarkably vivid... and buoyant, floating, leisure was found on it. Wonderful.

His reflections there... reflections on fire and it's nature and it's place and it's meaning while submerged in water was significantly antithetical. I must share:

"He saw the moon low in the sky now. The moon there, and the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun, of course. And what lights the sun? It's own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time and burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating on the land and a short time of floating in the river he knew why he must never burn again in his life.

The sun burned every day. It burned Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and 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 burned!

One of them had to stop burning. The sun wouldn't, certainly. So it looked as if it had to be Montag..."

The sun and Time. Burning. Wow. Can't you feel the perpetual motion? Doesn't it make you want to rush out and DO things, knowing this? Yet isn't the cadence of the writing here feel like it feels to bob and float along on a river? And in the rhythm of it, revelations arrive. Clarity comes.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

Here's another lovely turn of phrase... "...somewhere behind the seven veils of unreality..." Just really liked that.

Again, I just can't understand how so many of you thought the writing in this section was lacking! My copy is riddled with pencil marks everywhere... whole paragraphs - groups of them - underlined, margins written in, stars and lines to draw attention to them.

The land rushed at him, a tidal wave. He was crushed by darkness and the look of the country and the million odours on a wind that iced his body. He walked in the shallow tides of leaves, stumbling." Genius descriptions here.

I love how after this initial fear of the vastness of the land, Montag finds his comfort in it. He was no longer empty because it filled him and he knew there would always be more than enough. Wow. Often what scares us can be the most enriching and soothing things, especially if we face them... but even more, the realization that nature and the land was where serenity lived was lovely.

Courtney, I too found the discovery that fire could be warming, could give as well as take, a lovely discovery. Isn't it such a great lesson? The sun burns Time, but it also gives life, causing things to grow. The symmetry of it. It's both the beauty and the sadness of life.

I also liked how he found the opposite silence as well. "Montag moved toward the special silence that was concerned with all the world." It was the silence of the men by the fire.

The the voices weren't the meaningless void of the walls, either, but the ones that were "...turning the world over and looking at it..."

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

I love this reassurance and call to solidarity by the humble travelers: "We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here. when we were separate individuals, all we had was rage."

Their way of seeing themselves was certainly significant... "The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves was that we were not important, we mustn't be pedants; we were not to feel superior to anyone else in the world." Remember in the first section how it talked about the "understandable and rightful dread of being inferior" in relation to how society had gotten to where it was?

I liked that in this rather dark book Bradbury's synopsis of humanity was hopeful. "But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth doing." Our beauty lies in our perseverance. Also, it lies in the DOING not in the result. Wow. Take that to the bank and cash it!

Look at the juxtaposition of the men coming together to extinguish a fire, there in the wilderness, their hands moving... the action of doing - together.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

Okay, the last few pages contain some of my favorite all-time quotes. They are words to set my internal clock by; words to live by. I adore them. I adore words. I adore books, like this, that captures them so vividly and so resoundingly.

Like for instance: "And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the tings he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man.... He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on." I wrote in the margin, "must remember to leave the world bankrupt as well when I go."

Then, too, as Courtney pointed out: "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime." Must remember to touch, as well. To leave something behind. Small or large, it is meaningful and lasting. Which means we are meaningful and lasting, doesn't it?

This is one of the quotes I memorized years ago. I have to dust it off a bit, but I think I can do it okay... "'I hate a Roman named Status Quo!' he said to me. 'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' he said, 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,' he said, 'shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.'" Underneath that I penned, "LIVE IT!!!"

That astounding, impacting quote was followed by, "And the war began and ended in that instant." Literally, yes, but metaphorically, too... don't you think?

As a side note to these quotes, the description of how the city and the bombs had "displaced each other" was for me a visual feast. Also, Bradbury's depiction of the men at that moment... "holding onto the earth as children hold to familiar things" and shouting "a protest against the wind that ripped their faces" gripped me.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

This is the other quote I had memorized years ago. To IS me to the core...

"We'll just start walking today and see the world and the way the world walks around and talks, the way it really looks. I want to see everything now. And while none of it well be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning."



...yummy.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

Okay gang, thanks for your patience in all my postings. This book is in the core of my being, and it was a privilege to share my thoughts on it with you all. So what do you think, string them all together and turn it in as a thesis paper? ;D

[Courtney]

Michele. It's official. I have actually unpacked F451 and I am going back to re-read the 3rd section and add some of my notes here.

[Courtney]

Michele -- you quoted:

Like for instance: "And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the tings he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man.... He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on." I wrote in the margin, "must remember to leave the world bankrupt as well when I go."

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."

Must remember to touch, as well. To leave something behind. Small or large, it is meaningful and lasting. Which means we are meaningful and lasting, doesn't it?

I was sitting in my grandparents garden, looking at my great-grandmother's rose bushes and sobbing when I read this part. It was one of those days where I was feeling distinctly like a failure and ready to run back to an occupation that society values as a success. Reading this passage, that day, was like a massive sign. A moment of inspiration.

[Deborah]

I think that, today, we have to take Bradbury's war that wasn't really a war in the context of the times. The world's concept of warfare changed dramatically at the end of WWII with the bombing of Hiroshima. We went from conventional warfare where combatants more or less faced each other to the possibility of conducting a war with no human interaction. I think Bradbury really captured the ambivalence of the cold war era and the threat to personality that the "impersonal" atomic war posed. He created a dystopia where the personal had been leeched out of every aspect of society. What is more personal than the exchange of ideas through the written word and conversation? I think it is very telling that his wife attempted suicide without knowing that she did so. Her subconcious reacted to the lack of meaning in her life while her conciousness had no idea that meaning was important or even existed.

What struck me after reading the book this time around was the subtext that one of the original reasons for the censorship of books was what we call today "political correctness." Certain groups, "minorities," objecting to parts of literature and demanding they be excised. The copy of 451 that I picked up from the library included an essay by Bradbury elaborating on that. During the seventies, someone wrote to him, in all seriousness, telling him that he should rewrite the Martian Chronicles to include more women. I was reminded of the flap a couple of decades ago when "Huckleberry Finn" was pulled from school library shelves because it inlcuded the "N" word(which is, indeed, a very bad word). The irony was that, in Jim, Twain had created a character who was smarter, wiser and more noble than any other character in the book. That fact was ignored, though, while all the focus was placed on the offensive "word."

Anybody have any thoughts on this literary conundrum?

[Dottie]

Deborah -- very enlightening thoughts. Yes, let's wipe out the books with the "bad" words -- so we can eventually forget that these things existed and forget things changed as we move forward. And finally there's no need to think or speak or interact. Which is why I dislike so much of the pop psychology terminology used for every aspect of "normal" human behavior with which all of us must simply learn to work. Or is it too late already? Are we stuck tip-toeing all over to avoid speaking some truth and actually making progress? Are wwe heading down a slippery slope as the term is? I don't know -- as has been mentioned here -- TV "walls" are not so far away -- look at the size of the home theatre systems screens -- and think about the state of reading. Are fewer people learning to love reading and to love learning by reading these days? I think so and this isn't a recent concern on my part.

I had a wonderful experience with this book this time -- reaquainting, yes, but a deeper sense of disturbance as well. The cold war aspects of the story are more telling now -- but those who don't recall living in that period may eventually not see how disturbing this book is. What then will be the future's Fahrenheit 451? Or better question what is the current equivalent?

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

You know, there are few hidden evils in our current world as toxic as political correctness.

In thinking about the Huck Finn thing... It brought to mind my most hated word in the English language when used as it is usually used - the "C" word. In carrying that "no bad word" philosophy thought, The Vagina Monologues should most certainly be burned. Yet, rather than being demeaning and derogatory, it is empowering and invigorating. That word (and others for that matter) is used a plethora of times... but in doing so instead of stripping power from women, instead of beating them down to something to be used and abused, it helps the broken be filled up and begin to heal. I think my new most hated word is a phase: "Political Correctness."

I love that this book can bring such a variety of deep and interesting thoughts and ideas to the surface. *Contented sigh* Another reason why it is an all-time favorite!

[Dottie]

I'll second that!

[Deborah]

Dottie - I've been giving your post some serious thought. Earlier today I responded to whichwaydidshego vis a vis "The Great Gatsby" and Fitgerald in general, and I wondered if maybe he was a writer for his generation, but perhaps did not translate well into later times. In other words, not a "classic" writer, no matter how many English teachers try to make us believe otherwise. Does 451 translate to those who didn't "duck and cover" through the cold war? I agree with you that I found those elements of the book more chilling in hindsight than when I first read it in the 60s. My gut says that it will endure, that it embodies that feeling of constant unease and translates it for future readers. Of course, only time will tell. Is there an equivalent for today's age? I would recommend a book called "Pattern Recognition" by William Gibson. He is primarily known for speculative fiction, but this is the first book he did set in the present. It deals a lot with how we perceive and process emotion in the techno age, with some interesting insights into messageboard friendships.

[whichwaydidshego, the sage of sass]

Deborah, feel free to call me Michele.

I think the emptiness brought about by technology and the isolation it brings is a lasting effect and therefore it seems to me this book will resonate until things go the way of the story in the book and we must begin again.

How many people, after all, long for depth but then go home and tune in their televisions or play their computer games? The void of time is filled rather than the void within. Then, too, this brings more stress because of the lack of time for the meaningful. Also, they may be sitting next to someone yet are completely separate; disconnected. Then they feel so lonely. For all it's joys and convenience and utility, technology is really The Great Divider.

I will have to remember to take a look at that book, Deborah. It sounds intriguing. Thanks. (And, yes, I know you were speaking to Dottie.)

[Courtney]

Michele got it exactly right. I think isolation is part of the modern human condition and zoning in lieu of seeking connection exacerbates the problem tenfold.

[Deborah]

Hi Michelle (although I did sort of like referring to you as "whichway," it has a charming Carmen Santiago mystery about it). You (and everybody) should call be Deb or Debbie, as Deborah can make me feel, hmmm, judgmental. I wonder if Bradbury, when he was writing 451, realized what a double-edged sword technology was and would become? Case in point, television is indeed a vast intellectual wastleland ("Reality?" Really?), and yet we are here under the auspices of "The Gilmore Girls," which I just began watching on DVD and love. It has certainly been a joy these past few months getting to know people at Goodreads and discussing books, something I don't get the opportunity to do as much as I would like offline, especially with people worldwide. Oddly enough, Robbie and I live a couple of blocks from each other and attend the same church, but we probably talk more here, because this forum provides an intentional space for this kind of discussion. Yet, when I see a pallid, overweight teenager blankly playing a handheld video game on the bus, I want to yank it away and scream, "Bicycle! Rollerblade! Friends! Life!" I think that perhaps consumerism, and the way it uses technology to endlessly bombard us, is more culpable than technology in and of itself.

[Robbie]

Deb, plus, I don't have to try to figure out where my kids are and what my husband has planned when I'm on goodreads! ;)

[Arctic]

Michele said: How many people, after all, long for depth but then go home and tune in their televisions or play their computer games? The void of time is filled rather than the void within. Then, too, this brings more stress because of the lack of time for the meaningful. Also, they may be sitting next to someone yet are completely separate; disconnected. Then they feel so lonely. For all it's joys and convenience and utility, technology is really The Great Divider.

Great comment. and a good followup by Deb, too. Remember "It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not." Quality, Pores, Life, can be found on TV, it just isn't, often. There are notable exceptions I think, GG being one of them.

Also regarding the internet. I hate how much time I spend online, but often the conversations I can have online (such as this one) are sadly some of the most indepth and satisfying I get to have, period.

and Michele, I admire your passion for this section of the book, and you really make a great case for some of the quotes you mention. Especially the "I hate a Roman named Status Quo..." line. However, I have to side with the majority on this one in that I thought this was the weakest part of the book, writing-wise. I still love the book, but it started feeling a bit preachy at this point, and not as subtly inspiring to me. Actually it reminds me a lot of The Alchemist in that regard. (If that doesn't get me burned at the stake here, nothing will...heh).

[Arctic]

also wanted to point out this part:

"He took Montag quickly into the bedroom and lifted a picture frame aside revealing a television screen the size of a postal card. "I always wanted something very small, something I could walk to, something I could blot out with the palm of my hand, if necessary, nothing that could shout me down, nothing monstrous big. So, you see." He snapped it on."

reminds me of Lorelai when Chris buys that big ass TV.

[Angie]

I enjoyed the ending. I did think it was fast... maybe the third section could've been longer. But I like the war thing... it really got me thinking who was bombing who? Was it like a underground group fighting for freedom?

I like the part where they were talking about yards. The fact about how someone just mows will just mow.. but someone who goes out and tries to plant flowers and a garden actually leave their mark. The person who just mowed might as well not even have been in there.

[Deborah]

I think, however, that mowing can be viewed in a different context. I friend of ours has property on the Youghiogheny River in Western Pa. The land terraces down to the riverbank in three levels. The house is on the top level, the next level is a vast lawn with a weeping willow just off center. The next level is all natural vegetation with paths mown through them to the river. (I call them "Mazes for Dummies). He and my husband both love to mow using the riding mower, and I believe that, for them, it's a kind of zen exercise. Like making a sand painting, then destroying it. And, when the lawn (really a collection of nicely manages weeds) is freshly mown, being there is like being in a Turner landscape. I think one of the points that Bradbury brings out in this part of the book is intent (which also speaks to the issue of technology and a book lovers love/hate relationship with it). When you mow your lawn as an act of uniformity, so that your lawn is the same as all the other lawns - then mowing is just mowing. When you mow as an act of creativity, then mowing is expression.

[Arctic]

excellent point about intent, Deb. This also relates to living in the moment versus going through the automated daily grind.

[Angie]

That is true about mowing. I think you can just tell looking at someone's yard whether or not they have left their mark. I agree about weeds too... we stayed in a rental in a neighborhood where no one really cared for their yards anymore... so no one had grass. But I kept the weeds mowed down... others just let them go. So when I mowed those weeds... I like to think I left my mark in that neighborhood.