Page #50
The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on the brass and the copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, gently, gently, its eight legs spidered under it on rubber-padded paws.
Montag slid down the brass pole. He went out to look at the city and the clouds had cleared away completely, and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound. It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself.
"Hello," whispered Montag, fascinated as always with the dead beast, the living beast.
At night when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the Hound and let loose rats in the firehouse area-way, and sometimes chickens, and sometimes cats that would have to be drowned anyway, and there would be betting to see which the Hound would seize first. The animals were turned loose. Three seconds later the game was done, the rat, cat, or chicken caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentling paws while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the Hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine. The pawn was then tossed in the incinerator. A new game began.
I like this passage because it has very descriptive language like it does throughout the whole piece but I like the way he describes and incorporates the hound making it seem very dark and scary and big. Still knowing that Montag is just very afraid of the Mechanical Hound. He uses complicated vocabulary that just seems to fit into every sentence and doesn't feel to overdone. He connects his ideas very fluently with appropriate transitions. He also uses repetition to emphasize specific words. The passage is covered with metaphors and similes that all relate and sound good instead of a random simile that doesn't even make sense. An example is like "and he lit a cigarette and came back to bend down and look at the Hound. It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself". In this he relates lighting a cigarette and bending down to the hound to a great bee coming home from some field where the honey is full of poison. He actually really makes you think about that and what that would look like in your head. He does this consistently throughout the whole story as far as I've read it.
I like how you mention his use of repetition. I also agree it is a effective technique he uses. It really brings out certain words or details the author uses to get a point across.
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