Name:
Guided Reading Notes
Reading #1 – Follow along on your text while the excerpt is
read aloud.
Reading #2 – Using the subject matter of the prompt as
your guide, mark your text when you find examples of your
assigned literary device and marking technique. Circle the
device you are assigned: diction, imagery, details, sound
devices (assonance, consonance, alliteration,
onomatopoeia), comparisons (metaphor, simile,
personification), symbols, syntax (sentence patterns and
structure), repetition, plot/conflict, irony, and characters.
This may take 2-3 readings to find your examples.
After you have annotated your paper, discuss among the
other students who were also assigned your device what
pattern that particular device reveals about the customs
and beliefs of this society. Come to a consensus and then
write your insight in the chart below. Aim for three
entries per device unless directed otherwise. Groups will
then share their findings with the class.
Device
Diction
Word choice;
1-2 words
each; group
in 3s
Imagery
5 senses: see,
hear, taste,
smell, touch
Details
Facts,
observations
, incidents
which
impart voice
*Sound
Alliteration,
assonance,
consonance,
onomatopoe
-ia
(Compari
Sons)
Simile,
metaphor,
personification, allusion
Evidence
Insight into the customs and beliefs of society
Symbols
{Syntax}
Author’s
style,
sentence
structure,
voice
√Repetition
of words,
phrases,
sentences
Plot/
Conflict
∼∼∼∼∼
Irony
!
[Characterization]
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander
1) It was a pleasure to burn.
2) It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. 3) With the brass
nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his
head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning
to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. 4) With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid
head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house
jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of
fireflies. 5) He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the
flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. 6) While the books went up in sparkling
whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.
7) Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.
8) He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-
corked, in the mirror. 9) Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the
dark. 10) It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1953.