Fahrenhiet 451 - part one summary (Free week)

For my blog this week, I decided to give my opinion on a new book I am reading for English 111. It’s the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It’s a very interesting book, and after our teacher explained the first part of the book to us, I had noticed a lot of symbolism throughout it. The book starts out as Montag (main character), a firefighter, tells of some of his experiences. He’s a little different than most firefighters though, he starts fires instead of putting them out. He’s uniform has symbolism; it’s a black suit, with a salamander on the arm. The salamander resembles fire; it’s like a fire-ish creature. Later, he meets his interesting neighbor, Clarissa. She’s a little wacky and out of it, she puts him in a very bad mood, ruining his night because she couldn’t stop asking personal questions but she cared and had emotions. He finally gets home, opens his door, finds his wife, Mildred sleeping, but kicks a empty sleeping pill bottle, she had overdosed on sleeping pills, and he had to call an ambulance. It was interesting how the ambulance workers weren’t like professional to me. But apparently his wife does this a lot having her blood pumped out and having new blood put in. Also known as blood doping if you were really interested in sports, Olympians use to do this before competitions. But when she wakes up the next morning, his wife doesn’t remember a thing and shows no emotions. Mildred and Clarissa are exactly the opposite, its emotions and caring vs. focusing on her wall TV’s. I was very upset that Ray Bradbury had Clarissa killed so early in the book, I mean I knew it was going to happen, but I figured he could let us meet her family and get a better sense of why she is the way she is. This is some of the symbolism and summary of the first half of the book. It’s very interesting and a very well known book.