Fahrenheit 451: Hero's Journey/Quest Opinions and Help

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum section :)

I bet by noticing the title of the book in question, you can guess I am a highschool student looking for help with his paper. Well, yes and NO.

I am here to 1. get help on things I am stuck on, and 2. discuss with you my opinions so far.
I am doing the hero's journey for my paper, which has to consist of these 12 steps:

1. Ordinary World
2. Call to Adventure
3. Refusal of the Call
4. Mentor
5. Crossing the First Threshhold
6. Tests, Allies, Enemies
7. Approach to the innermost cave
8. Surpreme Ordeal
9. Reward
10. Road Back
11. Ressurection
12. Return with the Elixir

I can outline most of the steps, but some I am having trouble with.

1. Obviously, hes a fireman, content, and is "pleasure[d] to burn".
2. Clerrise asks him if hes happy
3. Has an internal conflict of his happiness at his home later
4. Clarrise, arguably Faber.
5. I find that this stage could be one of two things, when he begins to read the books or when he actually takes them.
6. In this case I think Faber would fit the role better than mentor. Beaty would fit the enemies.
7. This one I can not figure out for the life of me. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
9. Help? this one may be knowledge, maybe freedom? I need help with this one.
10. When he is journeying with the hobos. I think the road back is going back to an un-distopian society, and not specifically back to the ordinary world.
11. HELP!
12. I also don't know this one. The story seems to be left unfinished and there is no specific part to quote. He never really returns to anywhere with anything.

Thanks for all the reading!

EDIT: sorry for spelling and grammar I was writing this quite fast. Thanks!

You seem to answering your own question. Why should Bradbury consciously or unconsciously have written a novel that follows all the steps of a few traditional fairy tale plots? If bits are missing as you suggest then decide what is in their place or whether they are actually needed at all. What you are doing sounds like serious fun. This notion that there are just a few basic plots is interesting but not really to be followed as a prescriptive and reductive way of dealing with all texts. Artistic creativity is too chaotic for even the unconscious to be controlling it.

1. Obviously, hes a fireman, content, and is "pleasure[d] to burn".
2. Clerrise asks him if hes happy
3. Has an internal conflict of his happiness at his home later
4. Clarrise, arguably Faber.
5. I find that this stage could be one of two things, when he begins to read the books or when he actually takes them.
6. In this case I think Faber would fit the role better than mentor. Beaty would fit the enemies.
7. This one I can not figure out for the life of me. ANY SUGGESTIONS?
9. Help? this one may be knowledge, maybe freedom? I need help with this one.
10. When he is journeying with the hobos. I think the road back is going back to an un-distopian society, and not specifically back to the ordinary world.
11. HELP!
12. I also don't know this one. The story seems to be left unfinished and there is no specific part to quote. He never really returns to anywhere with anything.

Thanks for all the reading!

EDIT: sorry for spelling and grammar I was writing this quite fast. Thanks![/QUOTE]


It seems like tour tutor is using the narrative structure of Eurydice and Orpheus or another Greek legend and asking you to map the equivalent points in F451. Coming to think of it is also the biblical story of Christ.

7/ I haven't read this book for years - but what your looking at is the preparations Montag is making for the climax. What is he doing that results in him getting captured? How is he prepared? How has Bradbury structured this? Either everythong gets darker and meaner or Montag feels he's escaped and he pulls the rug from under our feet.

9/ reward - Monag is alive. He survived and has a new function - to bring light to the world in a different way than before. He's still a fireman, but in a more allegorical way.
10 -society is destroyed.

Point 11 for resurrection - there's two resurrections going on here. Montag was ostracised from his society, and now he is in another group. In addition the cities have been destroyed in a war - so humanity must bring itself back from the ruins. Montag is quoting passages from the bible - so the fireman is bringing a different light into the world.

Point 12 - entwined with point 11 - the elixir is the knowledge Montag and his group has remembered from books - they want to bury war and rebuild. So the elixir is the knowledge from the destroyed books which is saving the world.