Pathfinder for Fahrenheit 451 - 12th Grade Language Arts Project

 

 

Lynn Garver

Cuyahoga Falls High School

Centerville

Fahrenheit 451 Action Plan

Grade 12

College Prep Language Arts

Fahrenheit 451

 

Upon completion of the reading of Fahrenheit 451, the students will complete the following two part assignment.  The Dewey number for quotations is 808.88.  Information on American authors can be found in the 810’s, British authors in the 820’s, Shakespeare in 822.33, The Bible in 220, biographical information in 920and 921..  Subject headings to use include: quotations, the authors name, or the title of the work.

Part I:  The following people, events and literature are mentioned or alluded to in Fahrenheit 451. Students are to find information on the author/book.  Explain why you think each author or work was included in Fahrenheit 451.

 

1.      Dante Alighieri                                The Divine Comedy (1265-1321)

2.      Aristophanes                                  Greek playwright of satirical comedies (448-388)

3.      Marcus Aurelius                             Mediations  (A.D. 121-180)

4.      William Blake                                 Tyger! Tyger!

5.   Gautama Buddha                            Siddhartha Gautama, Indian mystic and founder of             Buddhism (B.C. 563-483)

6.   Book of Job                                   Bible (A man’s faith is tested by a series of tragic events)

7.   Lord Byron                                    George Gordon Byron, British Romantic poet (1788-1824

8.   Confucius                                       Chinese philosopher whose writings are the basis of Confucianism (c. 551-479 B.C.)

9.   Charles Darwin                               Theory of evolution by natural selection (1802-1882)

10.  Ecclesiastes                                   Bible (…for everything there is a season)

11.  Guy Fawkes                                  Plotted to blow up the English Parliament (1605)

12.  Ben Franklin                                  American patriot, inventor

13.  Mahatma Gandi                             Indian spiritual leader w.nonviolent resistance (1869-1948)

14.  Thomas Hardy                               British novelist and poet (1840-1928)

15.  Thomas Jefferson                           Author of the Declaration of Independence (1743-1826)

16.  King John                                      Magna Carta (1215)

17.  Latimer & Ridley                           “Play the man, Master Ridley…” last words of Hugh Latimer to Nicolas Ridley.  They were two Protestants burned at the stake in Oxford (1555)

18.  Niccolo Machiavelli                       Italian Renasissance political theorist (1469-1527)

19.  Herman Melville                            Moby Dick (1819-1991)

20.  Ortega y Gasset                             Spanish philosopher (1883-1955)

21.  Thomas Paine                                British-born American patriot who wrote Common Sense (1776)

22.  Thomas Love Peacock                  British writer of satirical novels (1785-1866)

23.  Plato                                             Plato’s Republic Utopia (B.C. 427-374

24.  Bertrand Russell                            British philosopher, mathematician, social critic (1872-1970)

25.  Arthur Schopenhauer                     German philosopher  (1788-1860)

26.  Albert Schweitzer                          French philosopher, physician, missionary (1875-1965)

27.  William Shakespeare                     Hamlet, Julius Caesar

28.  Harriet Beecher Stowe                  Uncle Tom’s Cabin

29.  Johnathan Swift                             Gulliver’s Travels (1667-1745)

30.  Henry David Thoreau                    Author of Civil Disobedience and Walden (1817-1862)

 

 

Part II:  Here are many of the quotes the Captain Beatty quotes or paraphrases.  Find (a) who said it and (b) if possible the source (c) choose three quotes and explain why they are included in this novel              

 

  • “All we like sheep have gone astray”
  •  “Who are a little wise / The best fools be.”

“Truth is truth

To the end of reckoning

They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts”

  • “Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge”
  • “Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,

Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.”

  • “A little learning is a dangerous thing:

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.”

  • “Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.”
  • “He is not wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty.”
  • “Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long.”
  • “He doth nothing but talk of his horse.”
  • “The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
  • “This age thinks better of a gilded fool

Than of a thread bare saint in wisdon’s school”

  • The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting”
  • “Carcasses bleed at the sight of the murderer.”
  • “Knowledge is power.”
  • “…a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself.”
  • “The folly of mistaking…a metaphor for proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself or an oracle, is inborn is us.”
  • “A kind

Of excellent dumb discourse”

 

 

 

 

Resources

 

Books

Readings on Fahrenheit 451 / Katie de Koster, book editor. Publisher Greenhaven Press, c2000. The Greenhaven Press Literary Companion to American Literature. An anthology of critical essays that provide a wide range of information and opinion about the twentieth-century novel "Fahrenheit 451," and its author, Ray Bradbury.

 

Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451": A Study Guide from Gale's "Novels for Students"

 

These are just a few of the Quotation Books available

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations – various editions published by Oxford University Press

The Home Book of Quotations: Classical and Modern

The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases

Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations – various editions published by Little Brown and Company

The Stein and Day Dictionary of Definitive Quotations

The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

 

Infohio Electronic Resources found at www.infohio.org

 

Encyclopedia Brittanica has these links for Fahrenheit 451. 

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/451/quotes.html

http://www.gradesaver.com/ClassicNotes/Titles/fahrenheit/\

http://www.novelguide.com/fahrenheit451/

 

Literature Online from Chadwyck-Healy has The Bible and Shakespeare in full text

 

Oxford Reference provides a number of Literature Reference Books on line as well as two quotation books:

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations

The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations

 

Internet Quotation Websites

http://www.quotationspage.com/search

http://www.bartleby.com/

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/6517/intro.html

 

Other Internet Sources

http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Genres/Fantasy/Authors/B/Bradbury,_Ray/

http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmFar45101.asp

http://www.raybradbury.com/

http://www.campusnut.com/book.cfm?article_id=951

http://www.heliweb.de/telic/bradcom.htm 

http://www.useekufind.com/classic_books.htm

http://www.who2.com/raybradbury.html

http://www.chraugustin.de/texte/Englisch/Englisch-%20451%20Fahrenheit.doc