Week 1- Entry A

Vocabulary

(p 27) Intuition- (noun) a direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.

(p 42) Intangible- (adj) incapable of being perceived by the sense of touch, as incorporeal or immaterial things; impalpable.

Appeals

1. (p 43) “There are a million small towns like this all over the world. Each as dark, as lonely, each as removed, as full of shuddering and wonder. The reedy playing of minor-key violins was the small towns’ music, with no lights, but many shadows. Oh, the vast swelling of loneliness of them.” This is an emotional appeal. Many of the words: dark, lonely, removed, shuddering, shadows, and loneliness make the reader feel a surge of emptiness inside. Bradbury uses his words wisely, and creates a feeling of being sad and scared.
2. (p 14) “The water was silk in the cup; clear, faintly blue silk.” This sentence makes water sound even better than it is. By using the emotional appeal of the word silk, Bradbury makes me want to go drink some water even though I’m not thirsty.
3. (p 7) “Books I read: four hundred…. In that time I figure four hundred lollipops, three hundred Tootsie Rolls, seven hundred ice-cream cones…” This logical appeal becomes important later in the book. Doug, the protagonist, says that these statistics aren’t what summer’s all about, it’s the other half, discoveries and revelations that make summer what it is.

Quote

(p 27) “There are five billion trees in the world. I looked it up. Under every tree is a shadow, right? So, then, what makes night? I’ll tell you: shadows crawling out from under five billion trees! Think of it! Shadows running around in the air, muddying the waters you might say. If only we could figure a way to keep those darn five billion shadows under those trees, we could stay up half the night, Doug, because there’d be no night! There you are; something old, something new.”

This quote isn’t incredibly important to the plot of the book, but I just love how it’s written. After reading it the first time, I went back, read it again, and then read it to two other people as well. Bradbury’s writing style is well displayed in this paragraph. He has such deep ideas that make me feel happy after reading them.

Theme

So far, happiness is a point addressed in this novel; Leo Auffmann attempts to create a “happiness machine”, but instead builds a machine that makes everyone who uses it sad, because they realize that they can’t be as happy in real life as they are when sitting in the machine.