Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is somewhat of a love-letter to books.
His original intent for writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries, which shown clearly in the allusions and quotes scattered throughout the novel.
In "A New Introduction to the Novel," written in 2003, Bradbury describes writing the novel in the basement of a library:
His original intent for writing Fahrenheit 451 was to show his great love for books and libraries, which shown clearly in the allusions and quotes scattered throughout the novel.
In "A New Introduction to the Novel," written in 2003, Bradbury describes writing the novel in the basement of a library:
'If there is any excitement to the novel at all, I think it can best be explained by the fact that every two hours or so during the next week and a half I ran up- and downstairs and in and out of the stacks, grabbing books off the shelf, trying to find proper quotes to put in the book. I am not a researcher and my memory is not all that accurate for things that I've read in the past, so the quotes that you find in the book were those wonderful accidents where pulling a book off the shelf and opening it just anywhere at all I found an amazing sentence or paragraph that could occupy a position in the novel.'
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The Assignment:
As a class, we will create a guide to the literary allusions in the novel. There are 30 listed below - each group is responsible for teaching the rest of the class about their 2-3 assigned allusions through the use of a PowerPoint Presentation - we will link these all together into one Presentation.
Working in Groups of 2-3:
1. open your group envelope - inside are the names of authors your group must research.
2. Open a Word Document, and for each author you are responsible for, you will explain:
a) why Bradbury would choose these authors to include in the book, and
b) why you think they emphasize the theme(s) of the book.
You need to be able to express the importance of these authors to your fellow classmates, in a brief PowerPoint presentation.
3. Copy and Paste your sources into the Word Document, so that you can site them in your PowerPoint.
4. Open PowerPoint, and begin - creating 2-3 slides for each author/figure. Your names should run along the bottom of each slide you create - in small font.
You should have one completed by the end of class. You will have 2 Mondays to complete this assignment (01/25 and 02/01). These must be turned in to tii.com by 11:59 pm on February 1st.
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Authors are:
1. Dante Alighieri - The Divine Comedy (1265-1321)
2. Aristophanes - Greek playwright of satirical comedies (448-388)
3. Marcus Aurelius - Meditations (A.D. 121-180)
4. William Blake - Tyger! Tyger!
5. Gautama Buddha - Siddhartha Gautama - founder of Buddhism (B.C. 563-483)
6. Book of Job - Bible (A man’s faith is tested by a series of tragic events.)
7. Lord Byron - George Gordon Byron, British Romantic poet (1788-1824)
8. Confucius - Chinese philosopher (c. 551- 479 B.C.)
9. Charles Darwin - Theory of evolution by natural selection (1802-1882)
10. Ecclesiastes - Bible (…for everything there is a season)
11. Guy Fawkes - Plotted to blow up the English Parliament (1605)
12. Ben Franklin - American patriot, inventor
13. Mahatma Gandi - Indian spiritual leader w/nonviolent resistance (1869-1948)
14. Thomas Hardy - British novelist and poet (1840-1928)
15. Thomas Jefferson - Author of the Declaration of Independence (1743-1826)
16. King John - Magna Carta (1215)
17. Latimer & Ridley - “Play the man, Master Ridley…”
18. Niccolo Machiavelli - Italian Renaissance political theorist (1469-1527)
19. Herman Melville - Moby Dick (1819-1991)
20. Ortega y Gasset - Spanish philosopher (1883-1955)
21. Thomas Paine - British-born American patriot who wrote Common Sense (1776)
22. Thomas Love Peacock - British writer of satirical novels (1785-1866)
23. Plato - Plato’s Republic Utopia (B.C. 427—374)
24. Bertrand Russell - British philosopher, mathematician, social critic (1872-1970)
25. Arthur Schopenhauer - German philosopher (178801860)
26. Albert Schweitzer - French philosopher, physician, missionary (1875-1965)
27. William Shakespeare - Hamlet , Julius Caesar (think treason/betrayal)
28. Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom’s Cabin
29. Jonathan Swift - Gulliver’s Travels (1667-1745)
30. Henry David Thoreau - Author of Civil Disobedience and Walden (1817-1862)
