Study Questions Fahrenheit 451
“The Hearth and the Salamander”
On a separate sheet of paper, answer the following questions as completely as possible using one or two
sentences.
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What is the meaning of the title of this novel?
What is the significance of the title of Part One?
Why is Montag upset by Clarisse’s asking him if he were happy?
Whom did Montag call when Mildred overdosed? What did these people do to help Mildred? How does
this scene affect Montag?
What does this scene explain about the future society Bradbury has created?
What do the seashell scenes tell us about Mildred and her relationship with Montag?
What problems does Mildred’s use of the three wall television and her desire for a fourth wall create for
Montag?
What is the significance of the dandelion scene? How does this scene affect Montag?
According to Captain Beatty in the firehouse scene, how did it happen that firemen changed from those
who put out fires to those who burn books?
What is the significance of the first few hound scenes?
What effect do the scenes with Clarisse have on Montag? Why do they effect him the way that they do?
What is the significance of the scene in which Mildred cannot remember where and when she met
Montag?
What causes Montag to report sick for work? What is happening to him?
What argument does Beatty use to defend the burning of books when he visits Montag at his house?
What do you think are Montag’s reasons for reading to Mildred?
“The Sieve and the Sand”
On a separate sheet of paper, answer the following questions as completely as possible using one or two
sentences.
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What effect does Montag’s reading of the book to Mildred have on her? How does Montag respond to
her reaction?
Who is the “White Clown”? What does Montag have to say to Mildred about him?
What is the meaning of the childhood story that Montag remembers about himself? How is it related to
the overall story?
What is Denham’s Dentifrice? How is it related to the overall story?
Why has Montag come to see Faber, and how is it related to the theme of this chapter?
Why are books hated and feared according to Professor Faber?
What three things are missing in the society of Fahrenheit 451?
What is the plan that Faber and Montag come up with?
How does Montag get the professor to agree to help him?
What does Faber give to Montag to help him with the captain? How will it help him?
What is Mrs. Phelps view on having children? What does it tell us about the society?
Who are Hubert Hoag and Winston Noble, and what is their significance to the story?
What is the theme and meaning of the poem that Montag reads to the ladies? How does it fit with the
rest of the story?
“Burning Bright”
On a separate sheet of paper, answer the following questions as completely as possible using one or two
sentences.
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Why is it significant that Mildred was the person who turns in the fateful alarm on Montag?
Why is it significant that Montag makes his escape on a river? Think about what rivers and water might
mean in the context of this story both physically and symbolically.
Why do the kids try to run over Montag? What does it show you about Bradbury’s future society?
What does Montag watch on TV while he is standing with the book people? What does it tell you about
Bradbury’s future society?
What is the significance of the story that Granger tells Montag as the jet bombers fly overhead?
What does Montag’s memory of Chicago show us about Montag?
Fahrenheit 451 Quotes Part One
For the following quotes, identify the speaker, and explain the significance of the quote in terms of the story.
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“It was a pleasure to burn” (3).
“Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in
a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them” (13).
3. “He felt that the stars had been pulverized by the sound of the black jets and that in the morning the
earth would be covered with their dust like a strange snow. That was his idiot thought as he stood
shivering in the dark, and let his lips go on moving and moving (14).
4. “Well, after all, this is the age of disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them
away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush” (17).
5. “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust
shall never be put out” (36).
6. “And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books” (51).
7. “Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste-pudding norm” (54).
8. “Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts” (55-56).
9. “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy
hour” (56).
10. “Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s
Cabin. Burn it. . .Fire is bright and fire is clean” (59)
Fahrenheit 451 Quotes Part Two and Three
For the following quotes, identify the speaker and explain the significance of the quote in terms of the novel.
1.
2.
“Books aren’t people. You read and I look all around, but there isn’t anybody.” 73
“The people were pounded into submission; they did not run, there was no place to run; the great train
fell down its shaft in the earth.”
81
3. “Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.”
82-83
4. “They show the pores on the face of life.” 83
5. “That’s the good part of dying; when you have nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.” 85
6. “Those who don’t build must burn.”
89
7. “But remember the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid
unmoving cattle of the majority.” 108
8. “Here we go to keep the world happy, Montag.”
109
9. “This is happening to me.”
115
10. “And as before, it was good to burn, he felt himself gush out in the fire, snatch, rend, rip in half with the
flame, and put away the senseless problem.”
116
11. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and
always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making th goddamn funeral pyres and
jumping in the middle of them. . .But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t
use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves
of all the poor ones who died before us.” 163-164
12. “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manners of fruits, and yielded
her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
“Yes, thought Montag, that’s the one I’ll save for noon. For noon. . .
When we reach the city.” 165