english essay 4 pages
nmsiisFahrenheit 451 Close Reading Practice
To support an argument about a work of literature, writers use “close reading” to analyze passages and draw out their meaning. Close reading takes careful look at the words used by an author and seeks to explain how those words convey a message or idea.
Here is an example paragraph in which I use close reading to analyze what Bradbury is saying about technology in one scene from Fahrenheit 451:
Passage/Scene:
They had this machine. They had two machines, really. One of them slid down your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there . . . It had an Eye. The impersonal operator of the machine could, by wearing a special optical helmet, gaze into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out. What did the Eye see? He did not say. He saw but did not see what the Eye saw. The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one’s yard. The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached . . . The operator stood smoking a cigarette. (14-15)
Paragraph:
Bradbury’s criticism of technology is evident in the scene where Mildred has her stomach pumped after she overdoses on sleeping pills. Montag finds her and calls for help, and the hospital sends two technicians who bring machines to pump Mildred’s stomach and cleanse her blood. The stomach pumping machine is described as a “black cobra” sliding down Mildred’s throat (14). This image paints the machine in a sinister light, as black is a color typically associated with death, and snakes are often associated with evil. Furthermore, cobras are venomous snakes, which suggests that there is something dangerous about the machine as well. Additionally, the narrator states that the machine has “an Eye” that made the operator capable of “gaz[ing] into the soul of the person whom he was pumping out,” but that the man pumping Mildred’s stomach “saw but did not see” (14). The machine, therefore, has the potential to connect people at a remarkable level, as the operator can literally see into his patient, and can perhaps learn something deeply meaningful about that person. For example, by looking inside Mildred, the operator could see that she has tried to kill herself and could appreciate that she is in a great deal of psychological pain. However, the technology fails to make a human connection. The operator sees with his eyes only, but not with his heart. To him, saving Mildred’s life is “not unlike the digging of a trench in one’s yard” (14). Not only is she inhuman, an object without feeling, but she is compared to dirt: the lowest of the low, the thing we walk upon and shake from the bottom of our shoes. This comparison reveals just how worthless her life is to the man who is saving it. His lack of care is reflected by the way the man “[stands] smoking a cigarette” as he is working (15). Clearly, Mildred’s suicide attempt and the act of saving her life have no emotional impact on the operator of the machine. Rather than being depicted as a positive technological innovation, the machine that saves Mildred’s life is used to illustrate just how meaningless life has become. Ironically, in the world of Fahrenheit 451, the development of advanced technology, which could have made people’s loves richer, is instead associated with evil and with alienation.
Practice:
Choose a passage from the novel that stands out to you, and a topic you think that passage relates to (alienation, technology, government control, censorship, anti-intellectualism, or something else). Then, write your own paragraph in which you use close reading to analyze the passage and explain how that passage relates to the topic.