Fahrenheit 451 Summary Activity

A common use for Storyboard That is to help students create a plot diagram of the events from a novel. Not only is this a great way to teach the parts of the plot, but it reinforces major events and help students develop greater understanding of literary structures, like five act structure.

Students can create a storyboard capturing the narrative arc in a novel with a six-cell storyboard containing the major parts of the plot diagram. For each cell, have students create a scene that follows the novel in the sequence using: Exposition, Conflict, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.

Example Fahrenheit 451 Plot Diagram

Exposition

The novel is set in a futuristic world where firemen start fires and all books are banned. A fireman, Montag, meets a woman named Clarisse while walking home one day. She asks him if he is happy. Although it is a seemingly innocent question, it causes Montag to evaluate his life.

Major Inciting Conflict

Montag sees a woman who burned herself with her books. Even though it is illegal, Montag takes a book, an item he is sworn to destroy.

Rising Action

Montag's chief, Captain Beatty, knows that Montag has taken a book and attempts to explain why they have been censored in hopes of reasoning with him. Beatty himself has committed many verses of famous literature to memory, despite his job enforcing the destruction of literature.

Climax

The novel climaxes when Montag reads a poem to his wife and her friends, who have come over to watch television. The ladies leave disgusted, offended, and threaten to file a complaint against him. It is his wife who reports him to the authorities.

Falling Action

Montag is ordered to burn the books himself. Instead he kills his chief and the other firemen in order to escape with the few books he has left. He is able to make his way down the river and finds a colony of intellectuals who love books.

Resolution

Together with these people, he hopes to travel to St. Louis where he can speak to a book printer to try and reproduce books. At the last moment, jets appear overhead and decimate the colony. The novel ends with the group searching for survivors to rebuild civilization.