In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses allusion, analogy, and symbolism to show the importance of knowledge and the devastating impacts of ignorance. In the beginning of the story you see Montag on the job, working alongside other firemen to burn down any home they can find housing books. This has become his normal, his hands doing all the work from muscle memory, no clear thought being put forth. When questioning the head of the fire department, Captain Beatty, about why they strive to demolish books he receives a slightly restricting answer. “With
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 is saying different lines from different books and its confusing Montag. He says one that relates to knowledge verses foolishness, "Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge" which was written by Sir Philip Sydney (102). This allusion fits in because when you get knowledge you taste the satisfaction of knowing that, but the fools don’t get the satisfaction of knowing knowledge, they miss out. They all know what they are told and never get to learn or grow. Mildred is always foolish when Montag is saying he should quit his job because he saw a lady burn in the morning and she say the lady was "simple minded" when the lady got the time to think and taste knowledge (48).
Book 21 focused heavily on setting up for the audience and everyone around him that the entire reason he was there was to avenge his best friend and make sure that everyone responsible paid for his death. One particular quote caught my attention as being a good explanation, stating “No, you’ll all die, die ugly deaths, until you have paid for the Greeks’ loss, for Patroclus dead, killed by the ships while I was away” (Iliad, Book 21, 141-43). He also exposes his motive for why he feels he must avenge Patroclus- he feels responsible for not being there when Patroclus died, possibly able to prevent him from meeting such a fate. Now he is taking out his anger over Patroclus’ death on all Trojans and refuses to show any of them mercy. Going beyond just seeking revenge, he’s also continuing to partake in the aforementioned brutal violence.
Montag witnesses both sides of fire in his lifetime. He has seen it cause pain and destruction but also bring hope and new beginnings. Just as a Phoenix rises from its own ashes, so too does Montag who rises from his faults and transforms into a flaming spirit of life lit by the words of wisdom derived from works of literature. Throughout the novel, Fahrenheit 451, fire can be seen as a symbol of destruction and chaos. The firemen use fire to burn away all works of literature and continue their hunt for books until all are destroyed.
“Fahrenheit 451” talks about a future American society, where technology has affected humanity negatively. The main character is Montag, a fireman who lives in a society where censorship is heavily used to hide the history of their country. Books are banned, and firemen burn them. Montag and his wife Mildred, a technology addict, begin to read books, slowly leading them to question the countless problems in his society. In both stories, Ray Bradbury uses tone and literary devices to show how an overdependence on technology as well as a disconnection from the
This is considered ordinary within his society because they are not allowed to read books or have knowledge previous to this era. This law is enforced with such intensity because the government fears that knowledge in one’s mind will contribute to overthrowing whoever is in control or has the most power within the society. However this does not stop a few individuals (including Montag) to pose threats to the government by reading and by posing questions. Within the beginning of the novel, one of the major people that sparked a change in Guy Montag was the exquisitely observant Clarisse McClellan. She is different from all of the others in the society who like to head for a Fun Park to bully people around or break windowpanes in the Car Wrecker.
Bradbury makes numerous events appear to have value because of the structure and demonstrates fire as a harmful source. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury expresses, “With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black” (Bradbury 1). The fire sends out a sense that it is a weapon and that people use it just to destruct anything that comes across the flames. Rafeeq O. McGiveron, a literary critic, argues, “... wisely suggests that to be truly human we must know our place in the natural world not only by appreciating the beauties of the wilderness but by respecting it 's awesome power as well” (McGiveron 1). The irony that McGiveron sees fire as soothing and protecting, yet the imagery utilized in Fahrenheit 451 seems to portray it as a dangerous cannon of flames that could potentially destroy a large number of
The novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, takes place in a dystopian society that strictly forbids reading or have a printed book in your possession. The protagonist named Guy Montag, is a firefighter who burns any illegal books that are found. Montag in the beginning of the novel is an average citizen who hates books and does not understand the true value of them. He is known as a salamander, Montag can walk among the books he is burning, but he won’t get affected by them. But as the story continues, he begins his transformation.
So he appealed to them : “Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal.” It is very significant because the old man wants to burn all his animal desires that are the black mundane wishes of our soul. It will be then easy to go to the eternity. Here the burning is not agony but the blessings of God. Through this fiery purification we may take the divine shape. Here Yeats used fire not as destroyer but preserver that remind us God Shiva in Hindu mythology.