The tone of this book was really quite dark, that is, when I think of my general impression of it. Maybe it is just that reading of dark events gives me the impression that the tone is dark, when it really might not be. I shall now endeavor to prove myself wrong, although this is really the kind of thing one should be proven right on. I am tired and threatening to start a rant, so I am just going to start writing.
After much consideration and random page flipping, I have decided my original premise is right, and this is in fact a gloomy book. It is more that gloomy, and there is also a certain tension in the writing. “The perspiration gathered with the silence and the subaudible trembling around and about and in the women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode (Bradbury 95-96).” I think the sentences feel so tense because they are building toward something about to happen. Just a few pages later: “The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting (Bradbury 99).” I think this sounds tense because of all hotness references.
The tone is really sort of sad when the author is describing Montag or Millie. “He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out (Bradbury 12).” That really is sad, talking about how he no longer felt like smiling. “Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows, but she felt no shadow.” Also sad, being so disconnected from everything. Most of the time the tone is just as sad.
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine, 1996. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment