The Best Thing About my Book

   I'm reading "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett and I think it is a very enjoyable book. It's about Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s and the separation between the Negros and white people. The black people are the maids for the white people, also known as the help. The story follows Aibileen, a maid who works for the Leefolts (mainly watching their daughter Mae Mobley), Minny, a back talking maid who works for the Footes, and Skeeter, a non-average white lady who cares about the help. This book has a very interesting and intriguing plot line making it really hard to put down. There's one thing about the book that makes it different from most books.

   "The Help" has three different view points, Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter. I love that you get to read about each of these lady's struggles. One chapter will be of Aibileen taking care of Mae Mobley and doing everyone of Mrs. Leefolt's commands. Then the next chapter you could have Minny trying to figure out what is up with Celia Foote, while taking care of her children and trying not to get fired due to her sass. Finally you can read about Skeeter, and her mom bugging her about having a job as a journalist. She also deals with boy drama and being different from the rest of her friends because she actually cares about the help. While reading you follow all three of them while they produce a book that talks about what it's really like to work for a white lady, which has to remain a secret because people would go ballistic if they found out about it. I'm really happy that in the movie they decided to keep the three point of view because I believe that without it the story wouldn't be as great as it is.

Fahrenheit 451 Theme Handout

Theme: People should take action rather than watch a society falter and crumble.

Handout by: Alise Cheeseman, Devin Fish, Elizabeth Atkins, Collin Aldrich, Sam Engelbert, Lily Carroll (Bell 5)

Events in the Story that Support this Claim:

1. Montag talks to Clarisse and realizes he is not happy in life.  
2. Montag goes to set a house on fire, steals a book, and watches the woman take action by staying in the house with the books while it is burning down.  
3. Montag begins to question the purpose of books and his society.
4. Montag gets sick and Beatty comes to talk him, bringing a warning about books.
5. Montag tells Mildred about the secret books and they begin to read them.
6. He takes action by visiting Faber, a man he met previously who knew about books.
7. Faber and Montag make a plan of action.  Montag uses a hearing device to communicate with Faber.
8. He goes to the firehouse, and learns his house is the next one to be burned down.  
9. Montag kills Beatty and escapes to Faber.
10. Faber and Montag make another plan because the government (and the Hound) is now chasing Montag.
11. He escapes to the wilderness, and comes upon several people, the head of the group being Granger.
12. Granger, Montag, and their acquaintances take action by remembering books of the past.
13. The city is destroyed.
14. Montag and his peers start a journey back to the city.  An allusion at the end predicts they will take action in forming the new society from their knowledge of books.  

Quote in Part One

“‘I’m going to do something,’ said Montag.  ‘I don’t even know what yet, but I’m going to do something big’” (Bradbury 62).  

Quote in Part Two

“‘I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing...but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself’” (Bradbury 78).  

Quote in Part Three

“One of them had to stop burning. The sun wouldn’t, certainly” (Bradbury 134).

Why is this Important to the understanding of the story?

Our theme is important in understanding the story because the society of Fahrenheit 451 is crumbling from the indifference of individuals in society toward each other, and also because books and learning from the past are not allowed; Montag, on the other hand, begins to see this, and many plot events show him attempting to learn about books and taking action to change society.  

How does this connect to modern-day society?

Our theme connects to modern-day society because in places like Gary, Indiana, there are a large quantity of crimes, which is evidence of a faltering society; Tommie Tatum, a cop and security guard (Devine), takes action by expressing care to the people, especially teenagers, in the town.  

Text to Text Connection

I'm reading "Beastly" by Alex Flinn and it's about a boy named Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle's got the looks and a famous news anchor for a dad. So when Kyle tells a weird girl named Kendra that he will take her to prom everyone knows he's just playing a mean joke. However after prom Kyle gets home to find Kendra in his bedroom.  She says "you're ugly now, on the inside, where it matters most" (pg 6). It's then that Kyle realizes that Kendra's a witch and she turns him into a beast. The new Kyle has fangs and claws and fur. Only a kiss from someone you love can break the curse and Kyle has a maximum of two years to break the spell.  Kyle moves away to Brooklyn with only his maid Magda and his tutor Will to keep him  company.  Kyle begins to feel hopeless  being  locked up in his house with only his books and  rose garden to keep him busy. He decides to change his name to Adrian  "which means  "dark one." That was me, the dark one" (pg 122). When a criminal breaks into Adrian's house he decides to let him go in exchange for his daughter. Adrian believes that Lindy, the criminal's daughter, will be the one to break his curse.

Sound familiar? That's because this story is a modern version of the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast".     Both stories include people who are handsome on the outside and ugly on the inside. There's also the father that breaks into the building and his daughter is the one that replaces him, although Lindy isn't nearly as brave as Belle.   These fables  both show that true love is enough to overpower anything, even a witch's spell.  I also think that these stories also have a common theme of the father being to busy for his daughter and the daughter spending a lot of time by herself. Just like Beauty, Lindy enjoys spending most of her time reading books. Both the fairy tale and the book go together great.

"Beastly is also now a movie with Vanessa Hudgens and Alex Pettyfer. http://m.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi714315801/