|
Member
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 18
|
Fahrenheit 451 (Extension)
Okay, this was my English assignment a year ago and we had to write an extension on the famous science fiction Fahrenheit 451, what happened to the main character after the end of the original story. My is below. Enjoy!
FAHRENHEIT 451 WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT
(CREATIVE)
“People must help one another, it is nature’s law.”
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
French writer and poet.
Tendrils of acrid smoke coiled around the air. What was once a city cloaked with full of colours, full of lights was now a valley a death, filled with blackened and twisted metal and rubble. A strange silence filled the once pulsating city. Gone were the advertisements, the roaring jet cars and the blaring music.
I stood in the middle of what use to be Elm Terrace, the place where I had recently escaped from just hours ago. Granger stood silently beside me, staring at the sight before him. The rest just stood behind us, not saying a word.
It seemed like there were no survivors left after the attack.
‘“After the first death, there is no other,”’ Granger whispered softly as he looked down at his feet.
“What?” I asked.
“Dylan Thomas, a Welsh poet,” he replied. Studying the bleak landscape, Granger walked on. The rest of the men followed. We all continue walking through the flattened city. For most of the time, we were just staring ahead, not knowing where to go, just wandering around. Since I had been away from the city for a just few hours, I looked around with caution and apprehension, afraid that some jet car may whisk through and run down the whole lot of us, afraid that the Hound might be still around, waiting, waiting ever so silently and patiently for me to walk into its path.
The noon sun was high in the sky but somehow, it did not beat down furiously on us, maybe because the effect of smoke and dust created by the collapsing of the buildings helped to block the sun. However, after an hour of walking, we were all covered with dust and dirt, with sweat leaving several trails running down our grime covered faces.
“Here, maybe we can rest here,” I said, pointing to a blackened house with its sprinklers still going on at full blast. Nodding wearily, Granger and the others shuffled towards the house before sitting under the cool sprays of the sprinklers, sighing with relief and joy. As I stood on the small lawn, I looked at the house with intensity. Somehow, it looked rather familiar even though it was baked beyond recognition. I walked towards the house and entered it through a gaping hole in the wall. The place strikes a memory in me and as I walked through from room to room, it slowly dawned on me whose house was it.
I walked back to the lawn and sat beside Granger who was enjoying the sensation of small water droplets hitting his back. Looking at me he smiled and sat in silence. As I looked around, I though back on what Granger said earlier about the Phoenix. It was true; we had one thing the Phoenix never had: we could always look back into history, looking at all the mistakes we had done and preventing from doing it again. Faber was right. Books had life, it had quality, although it was only one of the receptacles where humans recorded their thoughts and the world around, it ‘talked’ to the mind, it challenged the mind, it forced the human minds to think, to learn, to be independent. Now I realized why people didn’t want to read. Books forced them to think, to worry. No, people did not want to worry, no. They wanted to have fun, to have pleasure, to be happy.
“Faber, Faber,” I repeated, “This is his house.”
“Who?” Granger asked.
“Faber, the man who taught me about books, about the destruction of our country,” I replied.
Granger looked back at the house, had a good look at it for a while before looking back to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he replied.
“No, he survived,” I said, “He took a bus that leads out of the city before the attack.”
Granger raised his head to say something but was stopped by a sound. All the others stopped talking and listen intently. No one moved, although we were sure that there was no survivors in this area, we were surprise to hear the scrapping of foot against gravel.
“Who do you think it is?” one of the men asked.
“Probably some survivors,” another replied.
Through the heavy smoke, we saw a figure of some people approaching our direction. As one, we all stood up, waiting for the people to walk through the hazy screen of smoke.
A tall man broke out of the smoke screen. His face was covered with blood and grime and as he walked towards us, he licked his lips as he looked at the sprinklers. Soon, other people came out from behind him and followed. Like one the group gathered around the sprinklers and started licking the water droplets.
“Doesn’t it taste fine?” The tall man cried
“Fine!” The rest cried out.
Granger, the rest of the men and I stood apart from the group of survivors. Even after the attack, they were all still locked in their stupor, thinking that soon, everything would be back to normal, and everything would be all right. I wanted to shake them, to wake them up, to shove some sense into them. Something clicked and going through my mind, I searched for a sentence before finding what I wanted to say. I reached down into my pocket and pressed the hidden object tightly before stepping closer to the group of survivors; Granger looked at me with puzzlement.
“People!” I shouted, “This is no entertainment for us, this is war! Millions of men, your sons, your brothers, your husbands, are all dying out there! Look around you, what do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell? I see death and destruction; I hear the silence of hell, whispering through our ears, I smell the smell of blood, death and fear. Do you not understand? Our country is at war! This time it’s for real. Look around you, see how many of your friends have died, how many of your houses have been destroyed. Look around yourself, see how things are different, this is the time to be worried!
“Yes, death is around us, but it’s not the end. There is resurrection! We can be reborn! Not far from here is a river and on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And this is the fruit and the leaf!”
I yanked out the hidden Book of Ecclesiastes, the part of the Bible that was left, from my pocket and waved it around. Granger was tugging at my arm, telling me to calm down; the other men were staring at me. However, I was oblivious to them and continue staring at the survivors who now stopped drinking and were gawking at the book in fright and apprehension.
Some of the survivors were backing off and some stood rooted to the ground. The tall man stood closest to us and he was shaking and trembling with fear, not because he realized that the war was real and was around him but because of a book. “This man is mad. He needs to be burned, with the book, we need a fireman,” the man whispered as he continued to back off.
“No, you are wrong. There’s no fireman here any more,” I replied. I walked slowly towards the survivors, holding the book in front of me, “It’s only a book,” I said.
“It’s against the law,” the tall man whispered, afraid of the leather-bounded book.
“Yes! Against the law!” The others cried and at once picked up any objects they could find and held it in their hands, ready to hurl it at Granger, the other men and I.
“No! Damn it! It’s only a book! Wake up, wake up, stop dreaming and sleepwalking in your senseless pleasured world!” I screamed and yelled, my hand trembling from gripping the book tightly, I desperately wanted them to come back to their senses, to see the destruction of themselves and of the world around them.
“It’s against the law,” the tall man whispered again.
Over us, a group of jet planes screamed as they flew across the ash- coloured sky.
__________________
Cogito, ergo sum.
|
