9/19/19 David Gao|These prequels are hoT HOT HOT|

9/19/19
David Gao
PD 4

Aim: Take notes and reflect on our classmates' Fahrenheit 451 prequels

So today our classmates were presenting their Fahrenheit 451 prequel covers and three groups went today then we gave feedback about what we liked and maybe things that hey could've improved on afterwards.

Devils in Suits 

• Their cover showed a city encased in bubbles and another city and also people in suits.
•  They said that their cover was called Devils in Suits because government people usually wear formal attire like suits and so they were describing the government as devils because of the way that they limited speech and are controlling the people.
• This group talked about how the life that the government created is so superficial and dull that some people would rather die than live.
• First we discovered Montag's wife, Mildred in bed after chugging a bottle of sleeping pills and after Guy calls the guys to come over and suck the drugs out of her we learn that suicide is a common occurrence, so common in fact that they had a machine built and they had just gotten another call for help. This shows that being unhappy is just another thing that happens and if it happens, just call the guys with the sucky machine and it's all over and everything is good, almost as if it were the norm.
• The second suicide, by the woman in the fire with her books, goes to show that without her books she sees no point in living, and that she'd rather burn with them than give in to the government's ways of living their ideal life.
• The last one is not a suicide but Beatty was basically asking for it, literally, as he told Montag to pull the trigger and that's after he threatened his friend, so if that's not asking for death I don't know what is. This is basically Beatty seeing a chance to quit his empty life and so instead of running from death he stands in front of it and faces it head on.

This group was kind of weird for me because they didn't talk so much about their cover and instead jumped into the symbolism of objects in the story like the phoenix and how humans persist through the restraints of government and how dandelions represent new beginnings for Montag when he finally escapes the bindings of his life. Overall it was fine but I would've liked to hear more about the cover rather than Fahrenheit 451 itself.
End of the Road

• Their covered showed a sort of distant government building with a hand in front of it and strings coming out of the hands and people in groups that were labeled: Little black sambo, Uncle Tom's cabin, and smokers. 
• Their group talked about how society was at a standstill because everyone disagrees with one another and challenging other's ideas. This leads to nothing ever getting done as they are just fighting among themselves.
• The hands in front of the government building showed that the government is sort of puppeteering them to fight each other.
• They also said that it could also be started by the people but the government decided that the fighting was beneficial for them so they didn't do anything to stop it.
• The people fighting out in front with their groups represent how everyone disagrees with each other and also is a visual for this quote “Coloured people don't like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don't feel good about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Burn it. Someone's written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Burn the book.” 
• The three groups represent the three groups in this quote and also how this is what society is doing instead of working together and not realizing that this is exactly what the government wants them to do.
• This group also expanded by explaining that by manipulating the people in this way allowed them to control their society easier because now nobody has the intelligence to think differently and challenge them.
• To add on, people who read books were also more intelligent than those who didn't which made them sort of inferior and could have turned the majority onto the minority of people who were studious which could be a factor in the start of their "debates".

Overall I think this group did very well and in illustrating their points as the cover was sort of chaotic to show the state of the people and how the government was manipulating them without them really realizing, which was illustrated very well. Also their examples and quotes were really strong to support their argument.

Before the burn

• This group's cover showed someone standing in the middle with their face blurred out and two things by its side which the middle person is controlling.
• The blurred out person shows that the cause of the hatred for books is sort of unknown because it could have been the people that just decided that books were bad because they all disagreed with each other and hated on the ideas of some books. 
• The burred person could also represent the government to limit creativity and intelligence.
• This group talked about how if the government were behind the books then they could have slowly encouraged people to read less and less which would mean that nobody would think in different ways and create controversy which could endanger their version of an utopia.
• The group uses this quote by Captain Beatty "Forget them. Burn them all. Fire is bright and fire is clean." to support their argument that the government is manipulating them in some way as so many people think the same way Beatty here and just likes to incinerate their problems and leave them to burn away into nothing instead of dealing with the past.
• These arguments lead to the groups prequel idea that the children born are mostly all geneticlly modified to fit the government's view of a perfect society, an ideal generation
• They backed this up by explaining how disconnected the parents seem from their children almost as if they don't really care about them and were possibly requierd to have them so the government can construct its ideal generation.
•  They also provided more evidence in the form of this quote "You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. That's why we've lowered the kindergarten age year after year until now we're almost snatching them from the cradle" which shows that the government could be trying their best to completely control these children to their ideals so much so that one mother doesn't see her children 9/10 days, although it likely because she's so disconnected form her children that its's that way.
  
• Then they went on to explain how some people might not choose to genetically modify their children which could lead to "queer" that think differently because they are influenced more by their parents than the school system.
• They use this to explain how these kinds of children are a threat to their ideal society because they think differently and can influence those around them to challenge what they think as well.
• I think that this also ties into why the government is keeping track of these people in case they do something like influence others they can immediately eliminate them
• Another example of a "queer one" could be the man who was "Montag" walking outside, as he was different from everyone else as well and they kept tabs on him in case he were to influence others.

I think that overall their arguments were also very good and honestly I'm almost convinced that this could be what actually happened because it explains so much and the evidence to back it up and the way people act in the book just seem very on point with their argument.

Final Words:

I think that all three groups presented very good prequel arguments and their covers were all very symbolic. Their arguments also all were very plausible and all had a similar theme of either the government or the people being the cause of the limitation of speech and free thought, and all were similar in that the government definitely was in some way manipulating the people to get what they wanted, which is what's really important here because the government abused their power in a corrupt way to override and bypass the rights of the people in some way without the people even realizing that things are as bad as they are. Finally I think that there was an underlying theme of a empty life in all three groups, in Devils in Suits they talk about how people often commit suicide because they are that unhappy with their lives, which is a common occurrence. In End of the Road the theme is present in how society is at a standstill because everyone's arguments are empty and seem to just be arguments for the sake of arguing because they disagree with the very topic of their point without ever thinking about their perspective and focusing solely on being in the right and having that "right" being your group of people. In Before the Burn the emptiness is shown in how disconnected from everyone, everybody is because mothers don't care about their children and Mildred doesn't care about Montag and nobody cares about the books and the people but instead are just focused solely on entertainment that's right there, their "family".