Unformatted quotes and summaries
11 Zebras Chapter summaries
Fahrenheit 451:
Fahrenheit 451 quotes pages 9 – 19
- ‘it was a pleasure to burn… to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed’
- ‘books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning’
- ‘fierce grin of all men singed and driven black by flame.’
- ‘The jet bombers going over, going over, going over, one two, one two, one two, six of them, nine of them, twelve of them, one and one and one and another and another and another, did all the screaming for him’
- ‘I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane’
- ‘Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ’em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan’
- “Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”
He laughed. “That’s against the law!”
“Oh. Of course.” - ‘I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles per hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too?’
Page 20-30 summary
Fahrenheit 451:
Page 20-30 summary
Page 20 starts just after Montag’s strange meeting with Clarisse where they spoke about personal subjects, rarely touched on in the dystopia, which Fahrenheit 451 is set. After returning home, he had a realisation of unhappiness and that the facade he has put on up until that point got taken by Clarisse and the vulnerability he revealed with her questions. He then entered the bedroom to find Mildred listening to her earplug radios, or ‘seashells’, just as she has done for 2 years to distract herself from reality.
Montag accidently kicked an empty bottle on the floor, which he later found to be sleeping pills. He then proceeded to call the doctors, who arrived with two machines. One that pumped Mildred’s stomach, and another that replaced the poisoned blood with fresh blood. After the hospital workers left, Montag went outside to listen to the laughter and conversation coming from Clarisse’s house. He contemplates asking to go in and listen to their discussion but decides he shouldn’t intervene, then Montag went back to his own house. When lying in his bed, he reflects on how quickly life can change, from the chat with Clarisse to the attempted suicide of Mildred.
When he awakes the next morning, Mildred is nowhere to be seen and a worried husband, jumps out of bed only to find her in the kitchen. Although Montag tries to confront Mildred about her attempted suicide, she denies ever doing such a “silly thing”. She then absorbed herself in the television parlour (three full wall screens) where she remained mindlessly entertained daily, to focus on a play that the “family” were putting together. Montag, who was aware, as of yesterday of the shallow and meaningless world that mass media had created, seemed disinterested. Realisation of the passing time he spent in thought then hit him, and he proceeded to the door for work.
Quotes:
“Darkness. He was not happy” – The end of his ignorance and realisation of reality
“He wore his happiness like a mask”
“An electric ocean of sound, of music, and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind” – Constant distraction from genuine truth
“The breath coming out of her nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life, a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair” – A representation of the insignificance of humanity in the grand scheme of everything
“Faintly, in and out of her nostrils, and her not caring whether it came or went, went or came” – Evidence of the apathy for death that is apparent in the futuristic world in which, F451 is set
“Did it drink of the darkness? Did is suck out all the poisons accumulated with the years?” – The notion of diminishing the physical problem, yet not addressing the underlying issue that caused attempted suicide
“It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching” – Could be interpreted as a metaphor for humans in a time of suffering
“The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench” – demonstrating the un-personal and unprofessional approach taken by the men
“Slush up the emptiness” – Can you remove something that is not physically there in the first instance? Trying to fix a problem with a machine, despite the fact that the issue was caused by an engulfment in machines that failed to exemplify real life
“The operator stood smoking a cigarette” – Apathy for the harm that smoking can cause to the individual and their family
“You take out the old and put in the new and you’re ok” – Machines almost disabling people to escape from the anguish reality is causing and the false connotation that that the problem will be instantly solved
“We get these cases nine or ten a night” – Carelessness in the face of a suicide epidemic
“Clean up the problem in half an hour” – Used as a quick fix, instead of a sustainable solution
“Liquid melancholy” – Metaphor for depression
“There are too many of us” – Overpopulation and globalisation
“Only an hour, but the world had melted down and sprung up in a new and colourless form” – Continuation of previously when he became aware of the dysfunctional and twisted world he lived in
“Let me come in” – The desperation shown by Montag’s desire to be truly happy, like the McClellans’
“I don’t know anything anymore” – This line comes just before he swallows a sleep lozenge and is important in portraying the pain and helplessness he is trying to escape from if only for a few hours with the help of a sleeping pill
“Electronic bees that were humming the hour away”- Even nature has been modified to fit the criteria of modern life, and the humming refers to the passing of meaningless time
“The man’s thinking” – The first time since the book’s beginning that a character has been depicted as thinking for themselves (apart from Clarisse)
“What would I want to go and do a silly thing like that for?” – Shows the avoidance that she has towards identifying and resolving the issue at hand
The play – Another example of how Meredith distracts herself from the problems brewing in her mind with mindless entertainment
“It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed” – Technological advances, providing material pleasure and are easily out-dated and replaced with newer versions
“It’s only two thousand dollars” – Throwing money away for the sake of conformity
Page 20 starts just after Montag’s strange meeting with Clarisse where they spoke about personal subjects, rarely touched on in the dystopia, which Fahrenheit 451 is set. After returning home, he had a realisation of unhappiness and that the facade he has put on up until that point got taken by Clarisse and the vulnerability he revealed with her questions. He then entered the bedroom to find Mildred listening to her earplug radios, or ‘seashells’, just as she has done for 2 years to distract herself from reality.
Montag accidently kicked an empty bottle on the floor, which he later found to be sleeping pills. He then proceeded to call the doctors, who arrived with two machines. One that pumped Mildred’s stomach, and another that replaced the poisoned blood with fresh blood. After the hospital workers left, Montag went outside to listen to the laughter and conversation coming from Clarisse’s house. He contemplates asking to go in and listen to their discussion but decides he shouldn’t intervene, then Montag went back to his own house. When lying in his bed, he reflects on how quickly life can change, from the chat with Clarisse to the attempted suicide of Mildred.
When he awakes the next morning, Mildred is nowhere to be seen and a worried husband, jumps out of bed only to find her in the kitchen. Although Montag tries to confront Mildred about her attempted suicide, she denies ever doing such a ‘silly thing’. She then absorbed herself in the television parlour (three full wall screens) where she remained mindlessly entertained daily, to focus on a play that the “family” were putting together. Montag, who was aware, as of yesterday of the shallow and meaningless world that mass media had created, seemed disinterested. Realisation of the passing time he spent in thought then hit him, and he proceeded to the door for work.
Summary and quotes from pages 31-41
-Montag continues to take interest in books
-conversations with Clairisse continue
-dandelions show that Clairisse is in love, however Montag is not, which upsets him.
-Montag continues to find boredom with his fireman life
-the mechanical hound has a go at Montag
-Montag thinks the hound might know about his collection of books
-Clairise and Montag continue to grow closer
‘Im still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it.’ – Clairisse pg 31
‘God know why. You’re peculiar, you’re aggravating,chet your easy to forgive.’ -Montag to Clairisse pg 34
‘It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wilderness, of insanity and nightmare, it’s body crammed with that over rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.’ – Montag on the hound page 35
‘You haven’t any enemies out here, Guy’ ‘none that I know of’ pg 38 Montag
Fahrenheit 451-Page 75-85 quotes +summary
“and you dont have to think eh?”- Beatty PAGE 75
“Bigger the population, the more minorities”-Beatty PAGE 75
“The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy”- Beatty PAGE 76
“Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters”-Beatty PAGE 76
“Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick”- Beatty PAGE 76
“ you can stay happy all the time” -Beatty PAGE 76
“The world “intellectual”, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be”- Beatty PAGE 76
“You always dread the unfamiliar”- Beatty PAGE 76
“everyone made equal”- Beatty PAGE 77
“Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower” Beatty PAGE 77
“Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?”- Beatty PAGE 77
“rightful dread of being inferior”- Beatty PAGE 77
“Our civilisation is so vast that we cant have our minorities upset and stirred” Beatty PAGE 78
“Burn it” Beatty PAGE 78
“Fire is bright and fire is clean”-Beatty PAGE 78
“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school”- Beatty PAGE 79
“She didn’t want to know how a thing is done but why”- Beatty PAGE 79
“You ask why to do a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed”-Beatty PAGE 79
“ of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought.” Beatty PAGE 81
“books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe”- Beatty PAGE 81
“happiness is important. Fun is everything”-Beatty PAGE 85
“I am not happy”- Beatty PAGE 85
SUMMARY OF PAGES 75-85
Beatty is telling Montag the ways of the world and why having knowledge and books is harmful to the populations happiness. He tries to explain to Montag that books are full of evil and harmful thoughts and stories and have nothing to teach but unhappiness. Beatty talks about making all people feel equal by filling them with useless information nothing like philosophy and science. This makes sure no one feels inferior to others even if they are. Beatty believes its all about entertainment and fun, it is also mentioned that children are snatched at an early age to be brain washed into thinking in the ways that they are wanted to think. Anyone who is an “odd duck” is contained and taken care of quickly.
Page 185-195
Quote
“After all the running and rushing and sweating it out and half- drowning, to come this far, work this hard, and think yourself safe and sigh with relief and come out on the land at last only to find”
This quote to me relates to the dystopian life a person lives that when you think your safe and in control, in the end you’re still being watched and life is still chasing you.
“They know they can hold their audience only so long”
This line reveals the media nowhere days where the News try to entertain the audience by continuing on a topic completely irrelevant so the audience stays.
“The helicopter light show down a dozen brilliant pillars that built a cage all about the man”
This part in the book is where they try to trick the audience into thinking they have caught Montag even though it’s a normal harmless human that has committed no crime. This represents the Medias trickery on the human mind, trying to trick the humans into thinking of something that is not true.
“All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there”
I’m not quite sure what this really means but I feel it reveals that humans had the capability of gaining so much knowledge but couldn’t because they were controlled
Summary:
Montag runs from the hound into the forest, he’s senses everything around him, he smells the air and caresses the forests small details, and feel that this is he’s home, this is where he belongs. Montag discovers a fire crackling with 5 old men sitting around it there faces blank, they notice Montag and tell him to sit with them, they knew he was coming because of the chase on TV, the chase continues but the chasers know that Montag has escaped they just have to entertain the audience longer. They have to end the show quickly so they find a poor normal man with no crime in he’s body and pretend he’s Montag so the audience knows the chase has ended. The man was killed, and the screen turned black and an announcer declared Montag is dead, and Montag turned away scarred by this event that occurred. Montag wants to join these men as they have run from the force as well, they had burned books as well but before burning these books they read these books gaining knowledge of these books and becoming them, Montag is amazed about all this information and that’s the end of page 195.
196-202
“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.”
“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come around in their time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them, it can’t last.
In this section, Montag and the others move downstream. Montag worries about his wife, and he discusses Granger’s grandfather and his beliefs with him. They witness the city being bombed.
202-207
Montag and Co are outside the city when they hear the jets fly above and see the city bombed. Montag imagines the cries of Mildred and others in the city. They are knocked back by the blast and are all recieve some sort of minor injury. They get up and see the city destroyed with nothing left.
“And the war began and ended in that instant.”
“The sound of its death came after”
“The men lay gasping like fish laid out on the grass”
“The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turned the men over like dominoes in a line, blew water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees above them mourn with a great wind passing away South”
“City looks like a heap of baking powder. Its gone”
“Five short jumps, then a huge leap… that just about describes the genesis of Fahrenheit 451.” “I had been seized by an idea that started short but grew to wild size by day’s end.” “The concept was so riveting” “…what an exciting adventure it was” “I did not write Fahrenheit 451, it wrote me” Bonfire: A brief story he wrote earlier included apocalyptic themes of censorship and book burning. Bright Phoenix: A second story he wrote next was about a world where book were burnt and people memorised them to preserve them. The Exiles: Another story was about book characters being exiled and dying as the last books on earth are burnt. Usher II: A man tries to stop a group of cynical book burners The Pedestrian: A world where walking is illegal and pedestrians are criminals Fireman: The same character from The Pedestrian Influences: – Hitler torching books in Germany in 1934 – Stalin and his match-people and the tinder boxes – Witch hunts is Salem – Greek and Roman mythology – Triple burnings of the Alexandrian library He went to library on a Monday night He grew up around librarians, teacher, authors and books and wrote many short stories about them.