"Montag said nothing but stood looking at the women's faces as he had once looked at the faces of saints in a strange church he had entered when he was a child. The faces of those enameled creatures meant nothing to him, though he talked to them and stood in that church for a long time, trying to be of that religion, trying to know what that religion was, trying to get enough of the raw incense and special dust of the place into his lungs and thus into his blood to feel touched and concerned by the meaning of the colorful men and women with the porcelain eyes and the blood-ruby lips. But there was nothing, nothing; it was a stroll through another store, and his currency strange and unusable there, and his passion cold, even when he touched the wood and plaster and clay. So it was now, in his own parlor, with these women twisting in their chairs under his gaze, lighting cigarettes, blowing smoke, touching their sun-fired hair and examining their blazing fingernails as if they had caught fire form his look." (95)
Once again Bradbury has managed to create astonishing imagery with his striking prose. His consistent use of bold, fiery language makes even a relatively simple scene, like the one above, heavy with significance for Montag. This scene with Montag's wife and her friends is one of the saddest so far for me because, juxtaposed with Montag's seriousness and his anger, they seem so silly and so shallow. When he reads them poetry and one of the women begins to cry, you realize that none of them are really happy; like Mildred they are all miserable, perhaps have also overdosed, but they keep flitting from husband to husband and home to home and show to show because it's all they've ever known, and they see no way out of it. It's scary because you realize that, in a society like the one Bradbury paints for the reader, the majority of people do not rebel. Guy is one among many, and even Faber, the wise professor, is too frightened to act. Everyone is distracted by the thrill of race cars and the senseless noise of the TV walls, and they let that lull them into their false senses of happiness. This, more than the image of fire or burning books, is what I find sinister about Fahrenheit 451.
I agree, Emilie. The frightening part of this novel is not Guy but all those around him. It's most unsettling that they don't feel hopeless - they are accepting of their reality because it's comfortable. The woman's sadness at hearing poetry read is a visceral response, not necessarily a conscious expression of her unhappiness, and her lack of awareness of her own emotions is definitely sinister.
ReplyDeleteI also find that a haunting excerpt, and because I've read this book before I know there are many others like it. While Bradbury's descriptions are beautiful in their own way, they also do what they're supposed to in the story, which is to make the reader think. Your comparison of Montag's experience in the church and the chit-chat between his wife and her friends is clever I think, and I agree with your observation that it is sad because it's so shallow. I think it was probably Bradbury's intention to create a contrast between Montag and his wife to accentuate Montag's seeming aloneness in his disappointment with his society, but as the reader finds out later, like you pointed out, even the superficial friends of Montag's wife are brought to tears by poetry. No one is as happy as they pretend to be in this society, which is unsettling, their emotions seem manufactured.
ReplyDeleteThe discontent in the society's seemingly perfect citizens seems to be a common occurrence in dystopian novels. It often seems to be subconscious, and any sign of dissatisfaction comes through as an accidental slip. In 1984, Winston sees Parsons in the Ministry of Love, where people are tortured after committing Thought Crime. Prior to this encounter, Winston describes Parsons as the only man who wouldn’t get caught by the Thought Police because of his inexplicable stupidity, which could also be seen as fervent patriotism. Even Parsons, the ideal member of the Party, shows some dissatisfaction on a subconscious level, saying “down with Big Brother” in his sleep. He truly believes every lie that the Party feeds him, and says that he is grateful that he got caught before he could have caused any true harm to Oceania. Parsons and similar characters in other novels may represent some sort of hope as they show that even the most obedient members of the society can have subconscious rebellious beliefs; however, it seems unlikely that any of these characters would further investigate or act on their subconscious thoughts, but instead, quickly suppress them as the society wishes them to do.
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