It's time for second semester core literature. This semester we will read - Fahrenheit 451 by Bradbury.Please complete the following:
1) Get a copy of the book
2) Start an analysis notebook
3) Enter the following notes in your notebook:
Allusion -Allusion is a literary device in which the writer or speaker refers either directly or indirectly to a person, event, or thing in history or to a work of art or literature.
This novel is chock-full of allusions! Of course, this could be expected from a novel that is so concerned with books. Beatty’s speeches are particularly notable for their dense allusions: Little Black Sambo and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (59); “[t]hey are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts,” and several other references to the English Renaissance poet Sir Phillip Sidney (105-106); references to and quotes from Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, and Shakespeare (106-107). The list of allusions in Beatty’s speech could go on for pages, so I
recommend reading it over and performing a Google search of any unfamiliar quotations.
4) Cite 2 allusions from the text and state their significance.
5) Comment on a classmate's example.
4 comments:
Allusion: “First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin” (Pg.34) This allusion refers to Benjamin Franklin, an honorable figure in history. Benjamin Franklin was the founder of America’s first fire department.
Allusion: Captain Beatty said, "We have our fingers in the dike." (Pg.62) This allusion refers to the Dutch myth about a noble boy who, by keeping his finger in a dike, held back the sea and saved his city. I think this quotation shows that Captain Beatty feels, not guilty, but rather proud of being a fireman. He feels that by burning books, he and his fellow firemen are performing their civic duties of helping the public.
Two examples of allusion from Fahrenheit 451 are:
1. “And you must be’ – she raised her eyes from his professional symbols ‘-the fireman.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘How oddly you say that.’ ‘I’d – I’d have known it with my eyes shut,’ she said, slowly. ‘What – the smell of kerosene? My wife always complains,’ he laughed. ‘You never wash it off completely.” The significance is that you can tell a fireman by his smell because he has a certain smell to him.
2. “I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly,’ she said. ‘If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! The significance is that drivers go so fast they never see the beauty of nature around them.
dmkddfun ~ Your example of how Captain Beatty feels about his job is very well said. It is a little stange how they burn stuff, but it's good that he feels proud of what he does.
Allusion: (Pg.35) "The autumn leaves blew over the moonlit pavement in such a way as to make the girl who was moving there seem fixed to a sliding walk, letting the motion of the wind and the leaves carry her forward."
Allusion: (Pg. 108) "The door gasped..."
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