Fahrenheit 451 Essay Topics

Fahrenheit 451 Essay Topics

Fahrenheit 451 Essay Topics

Directions: Look at each of the following topics and be able to write a short essay demonstrating your knowledge of each one. When you arrive on the day of your PTA, I will narrow the field to three and you will choose one. In total, you will write one essay demonstrating your knowledge of the novel, and your skills in writing and analysis.

The only notes I will allow students to have with them on the day of the PTA is a list of quotations they feel would be most helpful in approaching the essay topics. Looking up quotations during the exam will not be allowed. Only those essays that include direct quotations will receive the highest marks.

  1. Beatty’s dying words are quoted from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:“There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am arm’d so strong in honesty that they pass me in an idle wind, which I respect not!” (p. 119). Beatty mocks Montag as a “second-hand litterateur.” Explain why Bradbury would portray the fire Captain as a literary expert. Why has Bradbury chosen these final words for Beatty?
  2. Mildred’s leisure makes her suicidal. Faber argues for the leisure of digesting information. Beatty mocks how people “superorganize super-super sports.” (p. 57). What is wrong with the concept of leisure in Montag’s world? Does Bradbury succeed in establishing a new idea of leisure by the end of the novel? Why or why not?
  3. Does Montag kill Beatty out of self-defense or to preserve something lost? Can Montag justify murder in defense of books? Do the extreme circumstances of Montag’s world justify vigilante justice to preserve the freedom to read?
  4. Explore Clarisse’s character in detail, explaining her motivations and the values she represents. Why must Clarisse be killed or silenced?
  1. Bradbury has said that his book is about the TV replacing books in society, not about censorship. What types of technologies have replaced books in Bradbury’s future? Do we see this technology today, 60+ years after Fahrenheit 451’s publication? Do you think Bradbury was right to fear that modern technology would replace books? Do you think books are appropriately valued in our society (as in not valued too much or too little)? How are books different from TV or movies (according to Bradbury, and according to you)?
  1. One theme in this book is happiness vs. discontentment. Are the people in the Fahrenheit 451 society happy? What does true happiness look like? Which characters are happy and why? Which characters are unhappy and why? Evaluate the happiness of our own society. Do we suffer from some of the same maladies that infect the Fahrenheit 451 society?