English Essay

It fine if you come of as a total bitch it doesnt bother me. Sorry im not as good at english as you are but im only in freshman english in high school and not that it matters but i a got a 96 on it thank you! thank you for you comments there all appreciated!

Hi Mauer!

It looks like you're struggling with writing a literary essay! It's very hard, isn't it? Plus, a lot of English teachers aren't very good at explaining what you need to do.

What I'm going to do to help you is to lead you through a literary essay that I had to write. That way, you'll (hopefully!) get a better idea of what your teacher wants and expects from you and you'll get A+'s all the time. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

I was looking over your essay... anyway! Outlines are really good things to have, but instead of having quotes, you might have what you want to discuss about the quote! A topic sentence of sorts.

For example! I had to write a literary essay for Fahrenheit 451, which is an EXCELLENT book and I thoroughly recommend it! You'll love it.

Anyway... this is what my outline looked like:

Thesis: Throughout the novel, fire and water play opposing roles to emphasize Montag’s conflict, fire symbolizing spontaneous, continuous change, which is typical of society that Montag lives in, and water symbolizing hindsight and retrospection that occurs during deep thought or revelation.

I. Fire is used to mirror the society’s needless consumption and constant desire of change.

II. They have lost their fuel for happiness when their material possessions are gone and, lost, seem to be burning themselves up for the want of having something to consume.

III. Though descriptions of fire are predominant throughout the book, water is another symbol that occurs when the characters are forced to stop and look deeply at a situation or event that has occurred.

Conclusion: While the fire that society creates can be put out and will be put out eventually, the quiet courage and bravery that individuals show will be remembered in the end.

In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the world is on fire. The story revolves around Montag and his journey from being a simple fireman, a book burner who burns books for society’s titillation, to becoming a thinking individual who can discern right and wrong and, driven by these impulses, acts upon them. He struggles throughout the novel to achieve some sort of balance within himself, tempering his fiery, sometimes rash behavior he has learned from the society with quiet, fluid introspection. Throughout the novel, fire and water play opposing roles to emphasize Montag’s conflict, fire symbolizing spontaneous, continuous change, which is typical of society that Montag lives in, and water symbolizing hindsight and retrospection that occurs during deep thought or revelation.

Fire is used to mirror the society’s needless consumption and constant desire of change. In the beginning when Montag is first introduced burning down a house that contains illegal books, Bradbury writes, “It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (3). The emphasis on the word “change” is horrifying because normally we would want to associate pleasurable change with something that is pleasurable as well, not as something blackened and eaten. This description shows that there is something wrong with the society as we would see it and they seem to be obsessive-compulsively creating change, just for the sake of it. As the scene continues, Montag pumps kerosene out on a house and ignites it, watching the house jump “up in a gorging file that burned the evening sky” while “flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch” and “blew away on a wind turned dark with burning” (3). This is an incredibly violent description. Though Montag only burns the house, in doing so he also seems to burn everything else, from the books to the sky itself until it creates a hellish scene where fire extends everywhere and consumes everything. This violent imagery shows that fire is a spontaneous process that destroys all, without stopping to think about the consequences or whether this action is even right or not. Instead, it exists solely to consume. In this way, it mirrors the society that Montag lives in where society exists to be continuously moved along, without thought or consequence of the actions that they take, consuming their material possessions and other things of little value. As such, there seems to be no accountability for actions and no consequence for an action that can’t be solved using a quick means. After Beatty talks about funerals and how sad they were before, he describes how society fixed that problem. Beatty says, “Five minutes after a person is dead he’s on his way to the Big Flue, the Incinerators serviced by helicopters all over the country. Ten minutes after death a man’s a speck of black dust. … Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean” (59-60). This treatment of the dead shows that this society really doesn’t want to deal with anything that is tangible and instead it would rather neglect its problems entirely. Later, when Montag is forced to burn down his own house, he says, “Its [Fire’s] real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it” (115). Fire shows that society does not care and would rather toss things aside than deal with the problems in depth.

More than just change, fire is used as a metaphor for perpetual motion. In this society, it seems that perpetual motion is prized higher than any other attribute. In his conversations with Montag after Montag begins to doubt his purpose in life, Beatty talks about why society is the way it is. “People want to be happy, isn’t that right? ... Well, aren’t they? Don’t we keep them moving, don’t we give them fun?” (59). This sense of continuous movement is inherent in the fire, which Beatty recognizes. Before Montag is forced to burn his own house, just after his wife betrays him, Beatty keeps him around and taunts him. Playing with his igniter, Beatty muses, “What is there about fire that’s so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it? ... It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it’d burn our lifetimes out” (115). In this way, Beatty shows that fire represents what this society desires itself to be -- a constantly turning cog that will continue on forever. It is society that wants to live forever through an excess consumption of material wealth.

Though the symbolism is for the book, Fahrenheit 451, in many ways it can be used to symbolize our own lives as well. On September 11, terrorists specifically took down the World Trade Center because it symbolized us Americans’ busy lives. Instantly, everything became some sort of hellish fire that seemed unreal. What happened was the firemen, very different from the firemen in this story, helped stop the fires using water and other means and, by sacrificing their lives for us, have been honored and thought about during quiet moments of repose. While the fire that society creates can be put out and will be put out eventually, the quiet courage and bravery that individuals show will be remembered in the end.

MauerMyMan wrote:I suck so i was wondering if i could get some pointers?

Right, so you better not use first person, contractions, or slang. It makes you sound unintelligent in essay writing.

Outline

I. The narrator of “The Scarlet Ibis” by James Hurst makes the story more realistic because it like sucks you into itno, reword this better and youwhat? No verb. part of the story. It is nearly impossible not to cry at the end because you feel like he is your own brother. It is written in a first person view.

II. I thought myself pretty smart at many things, like holding my breath, running, jumping, or climbing the vines in Old Woman Swamp.What does this have to do with anything?

III. I wanted more than anything else someone to race to Horsehead Landing, someone to box with, and someone to perch with in the top fork of the great pine behind the barn. Still no idea.

IV. James Hurst knows that by using a first person point of view that he is making you part of the family so that you don’t want to stop reading. Is this your thesis? Shouldn't it be at the beginning?
So I'm going to come off as a total bitch, and I'm sorry. It's not really me, it's my private school Honors English classes. You need five paragraphs. One intro with a thesis, three paragraphs supporting your thesis, and a conclusion. Your teacher will be impressed. Also, use quotes from the book to support your thesis, look up how to integrate such quotes and how to cite them. Your best bet is to look up the MLA format. Sure, it's hard, but it would make your grade go way up.