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Adrienne Bowen

Mrs. Tallardy

English 121

30 November 2017

Visual Artwork Analysis

The woman on 11 Elm Street was burned alive along with her decision to remain with her

books, for the have an immense significance to her, in a world where the paperbacks are frowned

upon. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, this was the turning point in Guy Montag’s overall

perspective. As the firemen arrive to flick their igniters, the woman on 11 Elm Street claims that

they will never have her books and is visually frantic hoping to convince the men to spare her

precious sources of intelligence. My artwork in regards to the scene that sets the stage for the

remainder of the book includes the woman, calmly with her books as she wished, and her home

of memories is engulfed in flames. Her books mean the world to her and are worth her own life,

she lets the ash (candle soot in my project) burn her face as she finalizes her choice. Guy

Montag, protagonist in the novel, reflects on the call and can not shake off the guilt. The smell of

kerosene grows heavy and haunts him. Acknowledging his books hidden as well, he thinks,

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a

burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” (Bradbury 51). Later

in the book, this drives him to the edge of his career. My art piece includes the flames by a

single match, a face blotched with ash, books burned, and burn blisters from the fire shown as

gems. The gems also act as symbolism for my unpopular belief, that ignorance destroys bliss.

Books that the old woman had claimed provided her with a sense of happiness and bliss, shown

through the gems. The flames instigated and enforced by the immature, ignorant, tyrannical
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society, smothers her and all associated with her. There was something in books that made that

woman who she was. In a society that strips its citizens from the objects that complete them,

sometimes the only hope is to go down in flames with them.