Page 127

"He began to shuffle idiotically and talk to himself and then he broke and just ran.  He put out his legs as far as they would go and down and then far out again and down and back and dout and down and back,  God! God! He dropped a book, broke pace, almost turned, changed his mind, plunged on, yelling in concrete emptiness, the beetle scuttling after its running food, two hundred, one hundred feet away, ninety, eighty, twenty, Montag gasping, flailing his hands, legs up down out, up down out, closer, closer, hooting, calling, his eyes burnt white now as hid head jerked about to confront the flashing glare, now the beetle was swallowed in its own light, now it was nothing but a torch hurtling upon him; all sound, all blare.  Now- almost on top of him! He stumbled and fell. I'm done! It's over!"

My favorite thing about this passage is the way the author propels the scene forward and forward and then it suddenly stops.  Like we talked about in class, this author effectively uses sentence length variety.  In the middle of the passage, you can see the repetition he uses to create this mass sentence building all the tension.  Then he starts to decrease the length of the sentences and ends with "I'm done! It's over!"  The author frequently uses repetition and parallel sentence structure to propel his writing forward.  By using this technique, the author has the reader experiencing the scene like the character is; second by second. When I read this, my brain tends to skip over some of it, probably because it's waiting for the main event the repetition is leading up to.  I think some use of repetition is good, but overusing it isn't as effective.  I think one reason the author used frequent repetition was to show how insane and frantic this character was. 

Page 93

"He was eating a light supper at nine in the evening when the front door cried out in the hall and Mildred ran from the parlor like a native fleeing an eruption of Vesuvius.  Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles came through the front door and vanished into the volcano's mouth with martinis in their hands.  Montag stopped eating.  They were like a monstrous crystal chandelier tinkling in a thousand chimes, he saw their Cheshire Cat smiles burning through the walls of the house, and now they were screaming at each other above the din."

The figurative language I thought was effective was the use of imagery and similes.  These vivid descriptions like "vanished into the volcano's mouth" create tension in the reader's head while reading.  I love when the author compares the women to a "monstrous crystal chandelier tinkling in a thousand chimes."  I believe this almost confuses the reader.  But then in the next line it says, "their Cheshire Cat smiles burning through the walls of the house."  I absolutely LOVE this line.  For me, "Cheshire Cat" made it clear these women were like the Cheshire Cat in the sense that they are sneaky and don't reveal their true identity.  By analyzing the figurative language, I can conclude the author sees these women as mischievous and evil; like burning machines.

Blog Post #4 (THIRD QUARTER OF NOVEL)

1.  Always title your blog post with the PAGE # (this will help others avoid reading spoilers).

2.  You will have 4 blogs- each blog will be about a quarter of the book- this second blog should be from the THIRD QUARTER of the book.

3.  Blogs will have 2 parts- Part 1:  passage from the book  Part 2:  analysis of the passage.

4.  Don't forget to comment/interact with your peer's posts!

5.  You CANNOT choose the same passage as someone else- the first one to post claims it!

For your third blog, I'm giving you FREE REIGN.  You may post about ANYTHING.  Just make sure you pull a passage and then comment/analyze/question that passage.  Happy Spring Break!

--
Ms. Melin

https://sites.google.com/site/mselmer114/

Blog Post #3

1.  Always title your blog post with the PAGE # (this will help others avoid reading spoilers).

2.  You will have 4 blogs- each blog will be about a quarter of the book- this second blog should be from the SECOND QUARTER of the book.

3.  Blogs will have 2 parts- Part 1:  passage from the book  Part 2:  analysis of the passage.

4.  Don't forget to comment/interact with your peer's posts!

5.  You CANNOT choose the same passage as someone else- the first one to post claims it!

For your second blog, I would like you to analyze the author's use of figurative language (metaphor, simile, personification).  Some writers are extremely figurative  .  As you read the second quarter of your novel look for the BEST example of figurative language the author uses.  

In part one, write out the example of figurative language (include the surrounding text so that we can have the context of your example).  If your author uses NO figurative language in their writing- instead find a passage where the author could have used figurative language   Include the passage where the figurative language COULD have been.

In part two, explain why the figurative language was so effective.  Think about the feelings it creates in the reader, the picture it shows, or the idea it represents.  You also want to think about the figurative language IN CONTEXT.  How does the figurative language work within the scope of the story?  IF your author has no figurative language, explain how you would have incorporated it into the text OR talk about why his style works literally instead of figuratively.

--
Ms. Melin

https://sites.google.com/site/mselmer114/

Page #43

He tried to count how many times she swallowed and he thought of the visit form the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the Electronic-Eyed Snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water and he wanted to call out to her, how many have you taken tonight! the capsules! how many will you take later and not know? and so on, every hour! or maybe not tonight, tomorrow night! And me not sleeping tonight or tomorrow night or any night for a long while, now that this has started. And he thought of her lying on the bed with the two technicians standing straight over her, not bent with concern, but only standing straight, arms folded. And he remembered thinking then that if she died, he was certain he wouldn't cry. For it would be the dying of an unknown, a street face, a newspaper image, and it was suddenly so very wrong that he had begun to cry, not at death but at the thought of not crying at death, a silly empty man near a silly empty woman, while the hungry snake made her still more empty.

I think this captures the authors descriptiveness because he describes the feeling of apathy. He is able to accurately show what it's like for someone to feel so empty, to live a life like everyone around you is inanimate. My favorite part about this paragraph is the last sentence. This was the woman Montag was supposed to be in love with, but he didn't even know  her enough to be able to cry at her death. This paragraph shows that all he ever wanted was to have something real, he wanted to care and he wanted to love, but he couldn't because something was holding him back. It's mainly the way he describes it, it's simple, and complicated, and hard to explain, but it gets the point across and it does it beautifully. It might have something to do with the way Bradbury puts it on the paper. I've noticed that he has a lot of really long sentences, there are pauses in between, but his thoughts are never really 'finished', it almost tires the reader out and shoots them into oblivion to think about what they've just read. It works really effectively.

Page 37

"Books bombarded his shoulders, his arms, his upturned face.  A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon.  In all the rush and fervor, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if it stamped there with fiery steel.  "Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."  He dropped the book.  Immediately, another fell into his arms."

One of the reasons I love this passage is because of the comparison between the book and the white pigeon.  I've noticed that Bradbury compares opposites to engage and almost surprise the reader.  When you think of fire, you don't think of a pure, white pigeon.  Using these type of comparisons makes the reader think a little bit more.  You have to uncover the "top layer" of the words, and discover the meaning hidden between the lines.  I also find Bradbury's word choice very thought out.  Not one word is just "there on the page."  It has a specific reason and purpose.  For example, the sentence, "...but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if it stamped there with fiery steel," demonstrates this technique.  The words "blazed" and "fiery steel" are used to create the vivid image in the reader's head.  It builds the intensity of the moment.  I think that's a good way to describe Bradbury's style.  He produces some of these unfamiliar words, and comparisons, and vivid descriptions to build constant intensity.

Page #45

    A great thunderstorm of sound gushed from the walls. Music bombarded him at such an immense volume that his bomes were almost shaken from their tendons; he felt his jaw vibrate, his eyes wobbly in his head. He was a victim of concussion. When it was all over he felt like a man who had been thrown from a cliff, whirled in a centrifuge, and spat out over a waterfall that fell and fell into emptiness and emptiness and never-quite-touched-bottom-never-quite-no not quite-touched-bottom...and you fell so fast you didn't touch the sides either...never...quite...touched...anything. 

    The thunder faded. The music died.


I like this passage from the book because it uses so much description I can see what's happening. the author does this a lot and I think it's his style because almost every passage I read is description. If they wanted to make a movie just tell someone read the book, you can already see what is going on. He has some vocabulary in here that I had to look up because I wasn't sure what it meant, but It helps explain better what's going on. Also the way he described the aftershock of the concussion was amazing. I've never had a concussion but if I did I hope it isn't how he seemed to explain it because it sounds awful. But I find it cool that he went off into explaining the whole concussion and then drew all his ideas back together but bringing in the thunder storm again.