Fire Symbolism In Fahrenheit 451

In “Forged by Fire” by Sharon M. Draper, Gerald, the main character in the story, grows into a brave man. In the beginning, Gerald starts a fire in his mom’s apartment. Gerald gets scared from the flames, sounds, and heat that he goes behind the couch to hide from the fire. After the fire, Gerald lives with his aunt. On Geralds’s 9th birthday, Gerald’s mom came to the house with a sister for Gerald, but he doesn’t want to see neither of the two. Throughout the book, Gerald get beat and abused by Jordan. In the end, Gerald hurries to his burning house and finds, Jordan on Angel. Gerald saved Angel because he tripped over Jordan’s body. Forged by Fire has many symbols thought this book. Sharon M. Draper creates the tittle Forged by Fire because of the symbolic and literal events in the book.

Once upon a time on a dark scary night all people could hear was crackling sounds. As the people wandered closer the bright orange and red flames caught their eyes. It was the fire of burning books or known as Fahrenheit 451. 451 stands for the temperature of which books burn. For instance the law is not to read books or have them for more than 24 hours. Also is about a guy who goes against it the law and starts to read the books. Should Montag be punished or not? People will have to read the books to find out. Anyway, nature plays an important role throughout Fahrenheit 451 by symbolizing, affects the characters, and brings the characters together.

Fahrenheit 451 shows how people’s rights to free speech and media are essential to a free thinking society. Guy Montag, the main character, is a firefighter, which in his futuristic society means he burns books for the government because they are illegal due to the potentially controversial ideas they contain. Montag meets a girl named Clarisse, who helps him realize he’s not really content in how he’s living his life and in his relationships, which begins to change his viewpoint on the society’s standards. His wife Mildred, as well as the rest of society, are highly materialistic and shallow in their daily activities and interactions. Montag eventually steals a book during the fireman’s raid on a house, which leads him to seek out a man named Faber, who is an educated man, and helps encourage Montag to take steps to action. Beatty, the firehouse captain, had been suspicious of Montag being in possession of literature. His dubious thoughts are found to be correct when Mildred turned Montag in. Montag is forced to go on the run, leaving the city for the countryside, where he finds other outcasted intellectuals. The city is bombed, leaving it completely destroyed and the society in ruins. The society Ray Bradbury creates in Fahrenheit 451 showcases how censorship is a threat to free thinking, society’s humanity, and human relationships through the use of imagery, symbolism and motifs.

. . he opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, ‘didn’t firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and keep them going?’“ (34). Montag begins to question the same traditions that Clarisse did earlier, and he even imitates her previous question of what firemen were like in the past. While burning books at an old woman’s house, he makes the transition from wishing to stray from society to breaking their laws. He starts by reading one to two lines.When a book fell open, “Montag had only an instant to read a line, and it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel” (37). Montag is now completely defying his society by breaking it’s laws by reading. Montag further increases his law breaking by stealing books and storing them in his house. He eventually starts reading to find answers to his empty life when he resorts to finding Faber to help him. They devise a plan Montag sees going against society as the only way out, following in Clarisse’s footsteps in questioning and going against society.

As the books went up in flames, Montag became enraged by society and how the world was becoming. Mildred, Clarisse, and Captain Beatty influenced Montag the most throughout the book to rebel against the government.

The first example of Montag’s understanding of fire is when Montag is burning a house of books on the job. Montag is shown to like fire very early in the book. He thought “it was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (1). He is shown to like his job again when

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is an excellent utopian/dystopian fictional story about a man who fights for the freedom to read. The government in this world has made almost every book (with a few exceptions) illegal. They have done this due to the contradictory ideas found in them. It was thought that all of the contradictions might confuse citizens on what is the truth and what isn’t. This book, along with being a utopian fiction, follows the Hero’s Journey archetype. Even though this book may not have purposely been made as an example of the Hero’s Journey the book and many others follow the paradigm. It may not be a perfect example, however, it definitely has it’s moments.

This “fire” in represents as books made illegal to stop the spread of knowledge due to the people of this future society becoming disinterested, and more interested in things such as speeding, talking to wall, that those people begin to believe in a false reality and show false emotions. There is also the totalitarian government of this future society that fears the sharing of knowledge because it would loosen the power that the government has created to overpower the people. Montag akin to the detainees of the cave begin to leave the cave to see the realities of their

“While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with

In this part of the book, all of the firemen including Montag received a call to burn a house with the books in there. Here became the turning point for Montag as he saw the woman, who already had made her decision to die rather than live in a world of oppression and restricted freedom of thought which books symbolize in this part, burns with the illegal books in the burning house, refusing to go out without the assurance of the safety of the books. We can suppose that his perception is gradually changing through the phrase showing that Montag felt a huge guilt over this, unlike the other firemen or Beatty. Furthermore, during the conversation with his wife, Mildred, Montag says, “We burn a thousand books. We burnt a woman."(page. 50) and continue to talk to Mildred “There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.” (page. 51) without consciously noticing his different perspective towards fire from the first encounter with Faber before the novel. These quotes represent that he rejected the idea of being a fireman by questioning himself and the cause of the incidents occurred on that day. Clearly, the quote “he pressed at

The word that describes the first third of Fahrenheit 451 is ‘fear’. The people in this society are afraid of the government, and the government is afraid of the people. In an attempt to stay in power, the government banned free thought – à la mode of Syria, Libya, the USSR and other countries. Because books bring intellectualism, books are thus banned and replaced with mass media.

One man whose name was Mahatma Gandhi has said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes” In my opinion I believe freedom is one of the most important things in life but I think most people take freedom for granted and unknowingly let it slip away as a consequence. It is not that difficult to guess that we have had a time when we said, “I can just do it sometime later” so we leave it for later, or we leave it for a while getting lazy and not even giving it a try so we eventually give up. If you had the chance to be the best you could be, why don’t you take it? For example, with the news daily reporting about threat of terrorism today, it 's more relevant to make sacrifice for the greater goods. Airplane

Government organizations often use symbols to portray their power or military strength. Writers also use symbols to convey a message to the reader. In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses symbols to help readers track the loss of civility of the boys.

Killing people isn’t good, but people fight wars and kill people to sustain a way of life, continue to survive and protect their family. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, there is a future where people are dragged down by technology and are like mindless sheep shuffling through life. This is sustained by censorship and limiting people 's knowledge, the government burns books and censors what people see on TV or listen to through their seashells, they use firemen to do this and censor everything. Montag, the main character, is a fireman and he begins to realize that the way of life that he lives in is severely flawed and starts to retaliate against society and asks help from an old friend named Faber. Beatty, the man that goes up against Montag, is also Montag 's fire captain, later in the story Montag kills Beatty to survive. Now, Montag murdered Beatty and that is against the law, but Montag has been justified in burning Beatty, it was either Montag or Beatty, if Montag didn’t kill Beatty it seemed Beatty would kill him. Montag had also trying to protect himself and Faber, Beatty had wanted to die anyway. Montag was already in trouble, by burning Beatty he gave him a second chance to escape and run to sustain his way of life.

Which is when one of the characters, named Captain Beatty told her, “‘Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other…’ Beatty flicked his fingers to spark the kerosene” The quote and action that the character did showed that, for him, burning is a simple task with no feelings behind it. Later in in the book, that changes, he states his true feelings about action of burning. Like it says in page, 109 where Beatty tells Montag, “What is fire? It’s a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don’t really know. It’s real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it.” In few words, fire is a way to escape your past, your problems and anything unwanted. I believe that Beatty as well as the rest of the characters were mistaken in the role of fire. They took it as a positive thing in the beginning because they didn’t know any better and didn’t know how else to take