"The Lilies of the Field" in Fahrenheit 451

This is just a small point about Fahrenheit 451, but I didn't feel that it went with my other post about smell, so I'm making a separate post for it.

When Montag reads the Bible on the subway, the text includes the phrase "the lilies of the field."  This is from the Sermon on the Mount.  It's a phrase that doesn't seem particularly relevant to the novel, but later it (in its original context) acquires a sort of retrograde importance.

A few pages after Montag rides the subway, he arrives at Faber's house, and they talk about how religion has changed to conform to the "families" in the parlor wall-screens.  Faber says

Christ is one of the "family" now.  I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down?  He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.

What Faber says can stand on its own, but - in their original context - "the lilies of the field" that Montag read about while in the subway emphasize it:

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  ...  And why are you anxious about clothing?  Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.  (Matthew 6:25, 28-29)

In that section of the Sermon of the Mount, Christ says to not worry about clothing (and by extension seems to say to not worry about having particular possessions at all), but now - via the perversion of the television parlors - He's made to say the opposite:  that there are "products that every worshiper absolutely needs."

The Dichotomy of Smell in Fahrenheit 451

This post contains spoilers.

Last time I read Fahrenheit 451, I thought there was something more to Faber's comment about book smell ("Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land?") than just an innocuous remark.  So when I recently re-read the book, I paid careful attention to the smells and made a note of each smell and what page* it appears on:

• Clarice says she'd be able to identify Montag with her eyes shut because he smells like kerosene (p. 6).
• The Mechanical Hound's olfactory tracking system is described (p. 25-26).
• Clarice asks Montag, "Have you ever smelled old leaves?  Don't they smell like cinnamon?" (p. 29).
• The Firemen are surrounded by "the continual smell of burning from their pipes" (p. 33).
• Mrs. Blake's attic is described as "musty blackness" (p. 36).
• Mrs. Blake "made the empty rooms roar with accusation and shake down a fine dust of guilt that was sucked in [the firemen's] nostrils as they plunged about" (p. 37).
• "Kerosene fumes" and "fumes of kerosene" permeate the air immediately before Mrs. Blake's house burns down (p. 38-39).
• The smell of kerosene makes Montag ill (p. 49).
• "The smell of blue electricity" of the Mechanical Hound snoops outside Montag's door (p. 72).
• Faber describes book smell as "nutmeg" or "spice" (p. 81).
• "Beatty, smelling of the wind through which he had rushed, was at Montag's elbow" (p. 110).
• Montag creeps through "a thick night-moistened scent of daffodils and roses and wet grass" to plant some books in the Blacks' house (p. 129).
• As the televised search for Montag continues, the Hound's nose is extolled (p. 133).
• Montag tells Faber to burn his furniture, rub down the door knobs with alcohol, and turn on his air conditioning and sprinklers to disguise Montag's trail (p. 135).
• "The smell of the river was cool and like a solid rain" (p. 139).
• Montag encounters "the dry smell of hay" now that he's escaped the city (p. 142).
• Montag experiences a "million odors" and "other smells!" as he makes he way further into the country (p. 143-144)
• The smell of the fire around which the literary hobos are warming themselves is different from the smell of fire that Montag is used to, and he imagines himself as an animal that "would smell like autumn" if bled out (p. 146).
• Granger gives Montag a bottle of liquid that will "change the chemical index of [his] perspiration" and make him "smell like two other people" (p. 147).
• "The air was cold and smelled of a coming rain" (p. 162).
• The bacon that the literary hobos cook "filled the morning air with its aroma" (p. 163).

When I finished the book, I looked over this list of smells and I noticed that they fall into two main categories:  there are the natural smells (leaves, spices, plants, hay, rain [ostensibly to contrast with the fire in the city]), and there are the more artificial smells (kerosene, pipes, electricity).  Furthermore, the natural smells almost all occur when Montag is with Clarice, Faber, or the book people, where the artificial smells are present when the firemen are burning houses or when the Mechanical Hound is involved.

Of course, there are a few exceptions (and there's also the possibility that I missed some in my list).  Beatty's "smelling of the wind" doesn't really seem to fall into either category, but I think that's because he's something of an in-between character.  He has the knowledge that the books give, but he's not in favor of it.  My edition of the book includes an interview with Bradbury in which he explains that Beatty "was a book reader, but after various crises in his life - his mother died of cancer, his father committed suicide, his love affair fell apart - when he opened the books, they were empty.  They couldn't help him.  So he turned on the books and burned them."  Of course, that's going beyond the text of the book itself, but it does provide an explanation for Beatty's liminal olfactory nature.

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*Obviously, page numbers will differ by printing.  These page numbers are from Ballantine Books' 50th Anniversary Edition [ISBN: 0-345-34296-8].

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

This post contains spoilers.

A week or two ago, I finished re-reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I think this was only the third time I've read it, and I found a lot of things that I'd missed the other two times.

The first thing I noticed was Edmund's comment about fauns.  At the end of Chapter Four, after Edmund's met the White Witch, Lucy tells him that while she (the Witch) calls herself the queen of Narnia, she really isn't.  When Edmund asks her where she learned this, she says, "Mr. Tumnus, the Faun," and Edmund replies, "You can't always believe what Fauns say... Everyone knows it."  The narrator explains that Edmund is "trying to sound as if he knew far more about them than Lucy."

What I found interesting here is that Edmund's comment about Fauns is similar to the Witch's comment from (in my edition) the previous page:  "Fauns will say anything, you know."  Not only is Edmund refuting Mr. Tumnus' opinion about the Witch, but he's doing it in a way that's like the Witch herself.  It demonstrates the power that she has over him since he ate the Turkish Delight.  In Chapter Eight when Mr. Beaver says that Edmund looks like "one who has been with the Witch and eaten her food," eating the food seems more metaphorical than literal, and at the beginning of the next chapter, the narrator seems to confirm this, saying that "there's nothing that spoils the taste of good ordinary food half so much as the memory of bad magic food."

---&---

Last time I read the book (which was last year), I thought I found a reference to Luke 1.  This time I was able to pay more attention to it.  In Chapter Seven when they first hear the name of Aslan:

each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.  Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror.  Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous.  Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.  And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

Throughout the book, there's an overtone of Aslan as Christ, particularly in his sacrifice for Edmund and his returning from the dead.  The reactions that the children have to his name are similar to Elizabeth's reaction in Luke 1:

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.' - Luke 1:41-44

In the next chapter, when Mr. Beaver talks about Aslan again, the children have "once again that strange feeling - like the first signs of spring, like good news."  The "good news" in particular hints at that Aslan-as-Christ overtone, since the word Gospel comes from words that mean "good news" or "good tale."

Edmund's reaction to the name of Aslan is different from the others' though.  At the beginning of Chapter Nine, the narrator says that "the mention of Aslan gave him a mysterious and horrible feeling just as it gave the others a mysterious and lovely feeling."  He doesn't have the same reaction as the others because he's still under the Witch's influence.  After he's been with her for a while, he begins to see that he's allied himself with the wrong side.  When spring comes (since Aslan is drawing nearer) in Chapter Eleven, "his heart gave a great leap (though he hardly knew why) when he realized that the frost was over."  He finally catches up to the others in his reaction to Aslan.

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At the beginning of Chapter Twelve, as the beavers and the children (without Edmund) are just about to meet Aslan at the Stone Table, the narrator describes the setting:

They walked on in silence drinking it all in, passing through patches of warm sunlight into cool, green thickets and out again into wide mossy glades where tall elms raised the leafy roof far overhead, and then into dense masses of flowering currant and among hawthorn bushes where the sweet smell was almost overpowering.

The "cool, green thickets" here caught my attention.  It's the same description that the narrator gives in Chapter Nine (The Founding of Narnia) in The Magician's Nephew:  "They stood on cool, green grass, sprinkled with daisies and buttercups."  Not only is Narnia returning to spring after the years-long winter, but it's returning to the Narnia it was at its founding.

I think the "cool, green" description might also be a subtle reference to Psalm 23:2 - "He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside still waters."  There's a connection of character descriptions here:  Aslan as Christ and Christ as the Good Shepherd.

In the next chapter, which returns to Edmund in the Witch's captivity, there are more descriptions that seem to be taken from Psalm 23.  The Witch "halted in a dark valley all overshadowed with fir trees and yew trees," and "it was so dark in this valley under the dark trees."  Lewis even repeats the "dark" in that second description.  Both of them are like Psalm 23:4 - "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."

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In Chapter Sixteen, Aslan revives the statues that the Witch has made her enemies into, starting with a lion:

He had bounded up to the stone lion and breathed on him.  ...  Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back - then it spread - then the colour seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper - then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair.

This bears some resemblance to God's creation of man in Genesis (and therefore also connects to the similarities between the Founding Narnia in The Magician's Nephew and the Genesis Creation account).  Specifically, both have the breath of life in common.  "Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." - Genesis 2:7.

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An-other subtle characterization of Aslan-as-Christ is in the final chapter, Chapter Seventeen.  After the battle against the White Witch, "they slept where they were.  How Aslan provided food for them all I don't know; but somehow or other they found themselves all sitting down on the grass to a fine high tea at about eight o'clock."  This is a similar situation to the Feeding of the 5,000 (Matthew 4:13-21), in which Christ feeds 5,000 men, along with women and children, from only five loaves and two fish.  Both Aslan and Christ feed a large group of people through miraculous means.

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Gardener and the Noble Family"

Since March, I've been reading The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales.  About two weeks ago, I read "The Gardener and the Noble Family," and a particular phrase stood out.  The narrator describes Larsen, the titular gardener:  "He was goodhearted and a good and faithful worker."

Because it was originally written in Danish and this is an English translation, I'm hesitant to assert anything too strongly, but the "good and faithful worker" seems like a phrase taken directly from the Bible, specifically the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).  To the servants who increased the money that was entrusted to them, the master - once he returns - tells each, "Well done, good and faithful servant."  Of course, the New Testament was written in Greek, so there are translation problems there too.  Arguing for the resemblance between a Danish phrase and a Greek phrase using only English translations is a precarious position, but the lessons for both texts are the same too.

In the Parable of the Talents, the third servant - who buried the money he was entrusted with instead of investing it - is rebuked upon the master's return.  He's told that he should have done something with the money, which is what the other servants did.

Larsen, the gardener in Andersen's tale, is like the two "good and faithful" servants; he's a good steward.  The noble family is impressed with fruit, melons, and flowers that other families have, but the produce - unbeknownst to them - came from their own garden under Larsen's care.  At the end of the story, they reflect on Larsen's value:

     "Anything that Larsen does," said the noble family, "they beat the drum for.  He is a lucky man.  We should almost be proud to have him!"
     But they were not a bit proud of it; they knew they were the masters of the manor, and they could dismiss Larsen, but that they wouldn't do.  They were good people, and there are many good people of their kind in the world - and that is fortunate for all the Larsens.

To some degree, this is like a verse near the end of The Parable of the Talents: "For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance.  But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away" - Matthew 25:29.  Larsen is a good steward, so he's able to retain his job as gardener.  It might not be "abundance" exactly, but it is a result of his good management.