The following is all the notes from Monday and Tuesday (not including notes via SmartBoard about the first few pages of the novel). Make sure you have all of the notes in your notebook as it is essential to the novel.
Vocabulary :
Science Fiction: a genre of fiction with imaginative but more or less believable content such as settings in the future
Dystopia: community or society, usually fictional, that is frightening in its implications
Stolid: unemotional and not easily excited or upset
Tatters: torn and ragged
Singe: to slightly scorch
Luxuriously: given to pleasure, especially of the senses
Flue: any passage for air
Compress: to condense and force something into less space
Censorship: suppression of broadcast or published material
Conformity: doing and thinking as others do
Catalyst: an agent that initiates change
Fahrenheit 451 and 1950s America
Originally published in 1953
-8 years after atomic bombs dropped on Japan
America’s economy was booming
Television became commercialized in 1950s
-it became a business
Air travel becoming larger
Korean war had just ended in 1953
-Over 36,000 American deaths
Cold War ongoing
-between U.S. and Soviet Union
-caused constant anxiety amongst masses
-MAD (mutually assured destruction via nuclear weaponry)
Beginning of mass communication
Ray Bradbury
Born August 22, 1920
Died June 2012 (last year)
Published more than 500 works
Disliked American conformity
One of the greatest writers of the last century
Fahrenheit 451 regarded as his greatest work
