Now that you have finished Chapter 1, focus on what Captain Beatty explains to Montag about the history of firemen and how society got to where it is now.
In your response, reflect on THREE different parts of Beatty's speech. What does Beatty say in each part and why does that part stand out to you as interesting or important? (Include at least one quote.) Please note: Parts of this section are confusing. Do your best to focus on three distinct parts of it, though.
The 3 sections to me were split up into the increasing pace of the world, leaving the time for reading long books behind, not having anyone being offended so that all of the books would turn bland and people started reading comics books and finally everyone wanted to be equal so the fireman were the censors of the community and burned the books that made people more intellectual than others. The most important thing Beatty says in the first section is how people would have less time to read and the population was becoming more dense, so news websites would put the information into short readings which lead to less reading in books. In the second section he says how no one wanted to be offended, so people would stop reading books and instead turned to pointless comics. In the third section he says that people wanted to be equal so the fireman were turned into the censors and burned all of the books because no one wanted to have someone use a book in order to make another person feel inferior to them. A quote I found interesting is on page 59 when Beatty says, "We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought." I thought this quote was important because this spoke to the third section and showed how they didn't want anyone to be more intellectual than anohter, so since they banned books, this led to no one thinking for themselves and for everyone to develop the same thoughts which changed the world.
ReplyDeleteCaptian beatty's speech is very clearly a prediction of our future. One part he described a culture the is similiar to where ours is heading of extreme consumerism. he describes that things became quicker, everything condensed to 15 minute shows when they used to be whole hours. Classics being condensed to lines in books. Also as the population got larger and larger there were more and more minorities and as such culture got more and more politically correct. suddenly things were being changed so that no one would get offended. "Dont step on the toes of dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, cheifs, mormons, Baptists, Unitariansm second-generation chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from oregon or mexico."(54). Then the general antagonism for those who were smart, better than you, made you feel worse about your self. The smart people that were bullied. Those that challeneged your thinking with questions that had multiple answers, philosephy, socialogy. Why study the vastness of the universe when it made you feel small. All of these things combined into one movement a culture where peace and happyness were the only ideals and shun everrything else. And books Being long, condridicting your opinions or making you offeded or unhappy everyone hated so they burned, just like everything else. In this one speech the author has predicted the true destiny of the human race. Consumerism, obsession of Happyness over all else, well summed up by the phrase "ignorence is bliss". If you burn it the happier you are. The reason why they dont remember anything is because it could have made them unhappy.
ReplyDeleteIn Captain Beatty's speech to Montag, he expresses how the tides are turning over the years and how the way people think and operate their lives on a daily basis begins to change. One section that I thought was important was when Captain Beatty expressed how the mass media shaped what society was in the day and age today. He explains how life began to speed up with more and more people filling the environment to where it got so crowded that no one had any time to do anything like read books. One quote that I thought blended with this well was when Captain Beatty said to Montag, "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." (52) I thought this quote made by Captain Beatty really explains how progressively people changed how to operate in a much easier way and began to adapt to a more simpler society quickly. A second section that I thought was important was when Captain Beatty explained to Montag of how the culture began to be dumbed down for the people. In such a way, it was because of the demands made by every imaginable minority group. He went on to explain that no one accepted being offended and no one wanted to offend others, which meant books became bland and harmless and people stopped reading. This section sticks out to me because it explains how as the society changed, the people's behavior then began to change. The last section in Captain Beatty's speech that I found interesting was when Beatty explained that the word "intellectual" became a swear. What he meant by this was that nobody wanted to feel less intelligent than anyone else. Everyone wanted to be equal in other words. Books were then views as weapons that made people feel inferior. He ends this section by saying that firemen then began adapting and changing their ways by burning things not useful to the society instead of saving things that were useful to a society. He explained that people just want to be happy at what their doing and that this new society provided pleasure in that.
ReplyDeleteIn Beaty's speech to Montag he says everyone wanted to be happy in life. That is the main goal. To make people happy, they had to destroy everything they didn't like. "Colored people didn't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people didn't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it"(7). He then goes on to explain that people stated to burn everything. Anything that makes at least one person upset has to be destroyed. This leads to the destruction of everything. It is impossible to make everybody happy. Later on he says that "if you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to answer"(58). This is very disturbing. Beatty is practically saying that government changed into communism. There is no choice in presidents. Eventually there will be no choice at all. Finally on page 59 Beatty says "We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy". Beaty is saying that when people started making others unhappy they started to destroy them. The government started creating things that contradicted what smart people were saying. By doing this everyone was thought of the same intellectual level. At the same time they were also creating a false truth that people began to believe. If this is the future, everything we know would be fake.
ReplyDeleteIn the First part of Captain Beatty’s speech he says how, “classics cut to fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume”(52). This exemplifies the patience of people thinning out. Everything needs to be fast quicker, take less time. Everything is sped up and everything is made to be disposable, so people can look at have it for a time and then throw it out and then by another thing and do the same thing over and over and over again. This is pretty impressive that the author was able to predict that this is what our society has come to, nobody has any patience anymore. In the second part of Beatty’s speech he goes into how as the population grew and grew more minorities became present and the more people had to be careful and politically correct. People got offended very easily and the authors of books and comics and screenwrites needed to have restrictions and everything had to become non-offensive. People didn’t listen to those restrictions and the firemen were born from this. This is also extremely close to what our life is like today. People are offended easily and everybody has to be careful about calling other people things because they might go and cry about it. Then after that Beatty goes into how there are a few specific people who push society and go back to the ways that the things once were. These people like clarisse are the ones that need to be watched closely because they are the ones that can change society. I thought that Beatty was going to be a good person that helped Guy steep out of the normal society but now he seems like he might be guy’s biggest threat.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Beatty explained to Guy Montag that they burn the books to keep everyone is the society happy. He talks of books as if they are a menice to society. Beatty truly does believe that burning the books are helping the society. Beatty explains that they burn books to make the people happy, and all of thebooks are being burned because the certain types of books upset people who have a problem with that topic. "Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. burn it. White people dont feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it." (57). With the government regulating the books to be burned, people in the society start to developed the same mind set towards the book burnings, and the firefighters.
ReplyDeleteCaptain Beatty's speach is a forshadowing of the opposite of what Guy is going to do. Beatty says that books are bad and to be burned, Guy is going to save these books and read them for his own personal good. When Beatty talks about how certain people don't like other books and how everything is better off without books because no one will be offended by them or can disagree with them it gives us a background as to why most books are banned. I find it funny that even though most books are banned and physical activity is promoted in schools that they still have a fairly good vocabulary, at least Guy and Beatty. They don't read too much and are constantly being bombarded by the technology around them. When he talks about having a record on Clarisse's family even though they don't have anything notable about them. Clarisse did well in school and her family never had any books that were found. She was just a person living in their world but Beatty is so afraid of her and says she was eliminated. He says "Luckily, queer ones like her don't happen often"(58). Which is again weird because she never really had any sort of record and never seemed to bother anyone. He then proceeds to talk about how everyone needs some sort of distraction or contest to win. How if theater or something else doesn't satisfy them they can take a drug and be happy about it. Everything should just be how to do it and not why, because if someone asks why then they're a problem and should have to ask why.
ReplyDeleteIn the very beginning of Beatty and montag's conversation, he brings up the old book called hamlet and tells montag that with books it becomes competition as "now at last you can read all the classics; keep. Up with your neighbors." (52) This could be why society doesn't like to have books around, because they didn't want people to have too much of somethings for whatever reason they did not like inequality, meaning that people with more books perhaps had more knowledge. Mildred finds the hidden book that montag took and asks what it is. For the second part of the conversation, Beatty “was almost invisible” (54) and is now being how Mildred was when she was third-wheeling in the conversation. For the third part of the interaction between montag and Beatty, Beatty starts to take a more intelligent and informed mind to the table. He starts to talk about how “our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred” (56). Beatty is kind of reminding me of the ways that Clarisse used to think. Also I think that there is more than just 3 parts to the conversation, those being the first three.
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ReplyDeleteWhen Captain Beatty comes to Guy Montag's house there is a very interesting conversation that follows. Captain Beatty explains the first more in-depth history of the United States and at the same time the world. The first part that really surprised me was how clearly he explained the degeneration of human society. “School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophy, history, languages dropped, english and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is an immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”(53). This quote really shows the reason behind the shortening of everything, just as a sort of consumer spiral into the abuse of immediate satisfaction. We can see parallels between this book and our future now, I could see this eventually happening. Thus we need to preserve our books as best we can, instead of giving immediate satisfaction to kids you must give them books and make them think. Along with the shortening of everything the shows and books gradually became more and more vague to become more acceptable. By doing this the government/whoever is in control is creating a more docile state so it is easier to control. The third and most important part of Montag's conversation with Beatty is when Beatty explains the true background of firemen. He tells Montag that they burn books because the need a more peaceful and happy country, and that books create that upset. They burned them so the cultural upset between minorities and majorities will diminished so everyone is happy and peaceful but at the same time this comes at the price of intellectual and social knowledge thus leading to the ultimate end to any real social history/norms.
ReplyDeleteIn chapter one Beatty gives a speech to Montag and within the speech there is three important parts of the speech. The first important part of the speech is that Beatty said that everything got shorter, newspapers, the news, books, radio shows, and reports. Secondly he talked about how before houses were not fireproofed and so the firefighters would put out those fires rather than put books on fire. Not only did they stop putting fires out because houses were fireproof, but they wanted to make people happier. Many of the books were discriminating against whites, black, and even smokers. Some of the books made people mad because they were insulting their race or certain things they liked to do. The Like most things Beatty said that things changed and the firefighters went from putting out fires to making fires. Lastly Beatty says that every fireman gets an “itch” in their lifetime and they are curious to see what is in the books they are burning. I think that Beatty says this because he knows about the book that Montag has under his pillow. I think he is trying to reassure Montag that it happens to every fireman, but he also says,”Well, Montag, take my work for it, I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing” (pg.59). Beatty is also telling him that there is no point in reading, so breaking the rules and reading a book would get you into trouble for no reason. Montag asks, “...what if a fireman accidentally... takes a book home with him” (pg.59). This question reassured Beatty that Montag did have a book in his house and it also helped Montag to understand that i was possibly ok to take a book as long as he or the firefighters burned after having it for twenty-five hours.
Beatty legitimately believes that burning these books keeps the society content. Happy, even. He believes that they burn books to keep people happy. More specifically, certain demographic groups. "Colored people don't like Little Black Sambo. burn it. White people dont feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it." (57) It seemed a bit racist when i first read it, then I remembered that the book was written in the 1950's. So all was forgiven. Also, its a dystopian society. So anything could have happened before this time period to allow this all to naturally occur. Again, the nazi's could have won World War II.
ReplyDeleteWhen Bradbury uses the word "minorities," he includes a whole list of groups that could be included. Bradbury imagines all kinds of groups that might be offended by the ideas of others. It's a complicated section of his speech. I think he's worried about the fact that sometimes ideas can offend people, so he's worried about what might happen if society never wants to deal with difficult ideas.
DeleteOne part of Beatty's and Montag's conversation that struck my interest was how authors "were full of evil thoughts"(55). I found this interesting because it relates to Howard Zinn's use and abuse of history. Zinn states how history will always be biased because we as readers subconsciously add our own opinion and form conclusions based on what we had just read. I think this connects directly with the people of this society. The people are forming far fetched ideas of the books because they are subconsciously making it seem "full of evil thoughts". The second thing I found interesting about Beatty's speech was when he said Firemen were given a new job "as custodians of our peace of mind"(56). I think this is interesting because even though they're doing something bad they have good intentions. They're trying to protect the people from anything negative, all they want to do is have people pursue happiness. Which is in a way pretty ironic in this book because none of the people seem happy. The people seem to be like Zombies that don't really communicate with each other. Additionally, if their main goal of society is to pursue happiness and peace, then why is there so much violence? Why are so many people killing each other if the main goal of this society is to achieve happiness? Lastly, another part I found interesting was how Beatty admits that they're trying to indoctrinate the people. "heredity and environment are funny things... the home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school"(57). This is interesting because they're intentionally trying to get rid of people like them. They're putting them into school so they can think a certain way. And people like the Mclennan's are seen as a threat to their society which why they paid such close attention to them.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're seeing the ironies of this society!
DeleteThe conversation between Beatty and Montag reflects a lot of what their society values and opens Montag's eyes to the true destructive nature of technology. Throughout Beatty's monologue one of the most prominent ideas he talks about, is what "happiness" is. From what Beatty said one can gather in this world "happiness" is quickness, convenience and the lack of struggle or difficulty. Thats where technology steps in because the advanced technology that "happiness" Beatty speaks about is what this society has established. Beatty explains how school has shortened, books cut down, everything is brought down to the climax, he says "life is immediate...Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts.. You don't have to think, eh?" Thats what the world has come to less thinking and more doing, and at that doing it the easy way no pain no struggle-which means happiness. Furthermore Beatty expands on books and why they don't fit. Not only because this idea of too much thinking, but also because the ideas books represent and how they differ from this idea of everyone being equal and the same. Reading books in their belief, leads to exploring new ideas and changing from the norm. Beatty explains this "we must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal.. Then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower. To judge themselves against" Furthermore Beatty addresses this pc culture they live in how certain words, were banned to avoid offending people like "the word 'intellectual' became the swear word it deserved to be."
ReplyDeleteI agree that this section makes us wonder how we should define "happiness."
DeleteI think with the amount of detail Beatty goes into with his speach, that he was in the same position as Montag at some point. When Beatty talks about how the society shifted, you can almost see a hint of him missing the old days and using the new and improved life as not that great. He says that books were cut down to fill 15 minute radio shows and then cut again to fill 2 minute newspaper headlines, the wording of this could be showing the Authors frustration but i think that Beatty was saying this because he was annoyed that people allowed this. He also ends his speach by saying that every fireman has at one point been intrigued but this might have just been beatty wanting some sort of excuse for him reading too.
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