...Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury is a futuristic novel that incorporates symbolism to represent specific meanings which are in the novel. Bradbury's use of symbolism throughout the novel, makes the book moving and powerful by using symbolism to reinforce the ideas of anti-censorship. The title of the novel: Fahrenheit 451 is a symbol itself. If you break it down and understand the hidden meaning of it, readers can see why Bradbury decided this specific title for his book. Paper burns at 451 degrees Fahrenheit and as readers read the novel they will understand what the book is about and how the title represents it. The Hearth and the Salamander, the title of part one, is the second example of symbolism. The title suggests two things which have to do with fire. Hearth, which people would think of a fire place, can be represented by warmth and goodness. It shows how fire can be used for good and in a non-destructive way. As for Salamander, this can be defined as a small lizard type amphibian which in mythology is known to tolerate fire without getting burned by it. As readers get through part one, they can see how Bradbury uses the salamander as a symbolic meaning for Guy Montag. Guy Montag’s character can be portrayed as a salamander because he works with fire, tolerating its danger yet he continuously believes that he can escape the fire and survive, much like a salamander does. The third symbol which is demonstrated in the novel is the phoenix. A phoenix can be defined as:...
Words: 1028 - Pages: 5
...Howard R. Stephens Jr. Dr. Cruz ENG 2115 11/25/14 Fahrenheit 451 Fahrenheit 451 is a brilliant fictional book written by Ray Bradbury in 1954. It is about future American people that do not know or pay attention to education, but rely entirely on technology. In relation to our past generation, people would have never felt this society would relate to our world. As our generation goes on you can start to relate Fahrenheit 451 to today’s society. There are certain things that are out of reach for our society, and then there are certain things that hit our society right on the head. Our society today is more concentrated on technology as in Fahrenheit 451. By Fahrenheit 451 being a fictional book it is almost unreal that it relates so well to our society today. The main character Montag is a fireman whose job is to go around town and torch books. Books in this futuristic society are banned. Society in this book forces people to drive recklessly, watch more than enough television on wall-size sets, and listen to the radio with ear attachments to their ears. At the beginning Montag has no doubt that society is right. As the story goes along he meets a young girl named Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse McClellan helps him realize the hollowness of his job and life with her constant and intriguing questions, love of nature and people, and her gentleness. Montag goes through a tough time a few days later. Montag’s wife, Mildred, tries to commit suicide by consuming a canteen of sleeping...
Words: 1810 - Pages: 8
...The book “Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury was about a fireman name Guy Montag. Montag does the opposite from what regular fireman do. He starts fires instead of putting them out. Books in Montag society is forbidden to read and if caught reading the book would be set on fire. Instead of reading, that society watches large amounts of television as big as the wall and listens to the radio attached to their ears. It was not normal for pedestraisn to talk and have meaningful conversations until Montag met a teenager name Clarisse. Clarisse was a strange girl that opened up Montag thoughts. She asked him about his work and what made him become a fireman. One question that really got him to think was the statement “Are you happy”(Bradbury 10). Montag believed that Clarisse was odd. She wasn’t like the norm of the society. She read books, walked the city like a pedestrain and, had meaningful conversations. After that encounter with Clarisse a number of events started to happen to him; his wife Mildred tried to commit sucide with perscription pills, a woman that hid books in her home decides to burn a live with her books, and Clarisse is killed in a car accident., With all these tragic events occuring, Montag tries to find a solution to this epidemic. The society has become controlled from power, a since of censorship. Bradbury has shown his viewpoint of society through this novel. Through this attempt, Bradbury got Readers views for Fahrenheit 451 qnd the meaning that goes...
Words: 654 - Pages: 3
...Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, fire plays a huge symbolic role in the story and on the lives of the characters within. Fire takes on multiple different symbolic meanings as the story progresses. In the beginning, fire is looked at as destructive, with Montag and the Firemen enjoying using its destructive properties. It is not until the story is nearing its end that Montag realizes that fire has the potential to be protective, and provide warmth, not just destruction. Montag is also told by Granger that fire is like a phoenix, being representative of both destruction and renewal. Fire's symbolism changes drastically throughout the story depending on the situation and the perspective of the people involved. Initially in the story, fire is portrayed as destructive and violent, only being used to cleanse and destroy. The main protagonist, Guy Montag, even begins the book by saying, "It was a pleasure to burn." (Bradbury 1). Montag's entire career revolved around the use of fire's destructive properties, and he enjoyed doing it. While Montag was still a Fireman, he understood that fire's...
Words: 610 - Pages: 3
...Colour Symbolism in Fahrenheit 451 This world can sometimes be seen as impure, but occasionally, someone can make it pure again. The novel Fahrenheit 451 shows this throughout its many pages. In the dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, colour symbolism can be used to show purity and impurity. Montag and the firemen, Faber, and Clarisse are three characters used in the symbolism. Bradbury’s characters, Montag and the firemen, are represented by the colour black. The novel reads that Montag “hung up his black beetle-coloured helmet and shined it…” (Bradbury 2). The colour black in this novel represents impurity, power, and evil. The firemen in this novel do not stop fires. Instead, they start them to burn books. The dark colour can be seen a few pages later when Montag is talking to Clarisse for the first time and he says, “’Well, doesn’t this mean anything to you?’ He tapped the numerals 451 stitched on his char- coloured sleeve.” (Bradbury 6). Montag is curious as to why the girl is not afraid...
Words: 570 - Pages: 3
...Symbols or the act of symbolism is when select things are used to represent another. For example, a fire could represent a passion or love. Green in the novel The Great Gatsby symbolizes the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. It represents Gatsby's deep love to Daisy and his American Dream. Another example of symbolism is spirit in Copper Sun. Spirit seems to be used as a description of the underlying essence of someone, something that gives an individual his or her purpose. Spirit is that everlasting quality of a person that can still be present even after the individual is dead. It can also be broken when a person is still alive. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury uses symbols to display how something can be quickly overlooked as...
Words: 1100 - Pages: 5
...Sometimes as well not sharing the negative things going around in your surrounding has a bigger impact than when books are burned. This might be because you are not helping for this to be heard by others and help it to be stopped. Censorship does come to play in this poem in how there are people like the people who are in control on power in our society, this is represented in the symbolism Stafford uses about “the terrorized countryside where wild dogs own anything that moves.” Lastly, the personification in “ignorance can dance in the absence of fire” is still following up on how not sharing ideas causes for ignorance to make fun of the fear people might have in...
Words: 512 - Pages: 3
...more understanding for a reader. However, sometimes the poet or writer presents those elements as irony and the reader may get confused about the true meaning of literature. Irony exists when a reader is led to expect things to happen but exactly the opposite happens. Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 familiarizes a reader with irony. His main character, the protagonist, Guy Montag is presented as a person whose life is full of irony. Through the irony of Montag’s life, Bradbury brings the reader into a better understanding of nature of language, of people understanding of their own life, and of the effect of technology. The first example of irony in the novel is the job of fireman. To readers, a fireman helps to put out fires. However, Bradbury presents the fireman, Guy Montag, as a person who starts the fires. Moreover, the symbol of hearth and salamander, in the first part of the novel, symbolizes a traditional home fireplace and the creature from mythology that could survive in the fire and not get harmed. However, Bradbury through that symbol presents irony. The reader discovers that Montag does not live unharmed by fire; but he realizes, how burning many books destroys his society. The symbolism presents irony, which will help the readers to go deeper into the true meaning of the book. It also will let them think about the main character’s behavior, and how that affects his life as well as the reader’s life. Secondly, Bradbury uses irony to show the reader that people are...
Words: 728 - Pages: 3
...O’Riyan L. 4th period April 13, 2016 Limitations to Happiness Fahrenheit 451 does society have true happiness? Society goes through different experiences to achieve happiness. Montag starts to question different aspects of life by what is deemed as unusual. Ray Bradbury shows that happiness is trying to be achieved through the banning and burning of books. The concept of technology and conformity shows how happiness can or cannot be achieved. Bradbury uses figurative language and symbolism to express the theme of technology. In the “Hearth of the Salamander” Montag expresses that there were “two machines really. One of them slid down into her stomach like a black cobra, an echoing well looking for all the old water and old time gathered there”...
Words: 629 - Pages: 3
...Fire in Our Eyes Fire. Fire can do many things: destroy, heat, cook. Not only can it do many things, it can also be an abstract concept. Just like it being able to do many things, there are many ways writers can use it as symbolism. For Montag in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, fire is destruction; fire is happiness but, he learns, fire is also for survival. Firemen are there to come and save people when houses burn, right? Wrong! In Fahrenheit 451 the firemen are the ones who burn the house; it is the status quo. The firemen would not just go around burning houses to destroy them. They made sure there was one reason: books. Books were the quarry that they are always searching to burn. If the firemen did not burn the person’s house the only way to get out of it is for the owner to burn it. For example, “The woman’s hand twitched on the single matchstick. The fumes of kerosene bloomed up about her” (Bradbury 36-37). After this incident, Montag first starting thinking that the books might have something in them, something...
Words: 558 - Pages: 3
...adolescents slaughtering each other for the entertainment of the wealthy, like in the Hunger Games, or the possibility of a world where criminals are put through brutal behavioral modifications by the system in return for freedom, as seen in the cult classic film A Clockwork Orange, are all probable events destined to happen in the not so distant future. The dystopian genre gives readers and viewers a glimpse of what can occur and harm society if we are not able to prevent a world that ends in chaos. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and The Road, written by Cormac McCarthy and directed by John Hillcoat, present worlds in which individuals deal with their terrible reality by fighting for a better one. Utilizing stylistic elements to depict a horrific world that can be easily end up as our own, both authors are able to display the possible fate of civilization. Part 1: The Social Commentary and Style within Fahrenheit 451 In Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, he depicts a society that is in denial about how unhappy they are and how they pretend like the whole world revolves around them. The society consists of a general public who don’t seem to do anything except feeding their minds with anything that will entertain them. There are firemen whose job is to burn books to rid the community of the past and the valuable knowledge that books contain. These people are conditioned to think that their simple, routine life, makes them happy. In the beginning of the book, the main character...
Words: 1229 - Pages: 5
...“Those who don't build must burn. It's as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”(Bradbury 89). In the novel Fahrenheit 451, the main idea centers around the importance of human connection. Bradbury stresses this idea by allowing fire to take away the idea of building relationships with others. In turn, the society begins to collapse and literally ends with the city in flames. He also illustrates how much the real world relates to the crumbling world in the novel through technology, their current events, and the way the people treat certain issues. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury through his use of literary terms exposes how literature saves society from its inevitable demise by revealing today’s society’s weaknesses, challenges readers to connect the dystopian society in the book to reality, and demonstrates how human connections give people a reason to live and love. Even when Bradbury was a child he was interested in literature. In the article “Ray Bradbury: Martian...
Words: 2434 - Pages: 10
...“”You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” (-James Baldwin) The story Fahrenheit 451, by Rad Bradbury, is a symbolic story that reveals censorship of people and their knowledge. Knowing that books provide emotions, imagination, and make people crave independence, Bradbury had banned the idea of books by creating a democracy that concluded that books hurt people and went against them. This book used characters and figurative language that symbolized the theme, which is censorship of not only people, but the question of ‘why’ as well. “I don’t talk things, sir,” said Faber. ”I talk the meanings of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.” (Pg. 71, Bradbury)...
Words: 743 - Pages: 3
...The book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury has a complex plot filled with various devices and themes, with the most common themes being censorship and what makes humans human. Censorship is the most prevalent theme due to the fact that the book’s plot is about a dystopian future where books are thought of as evil and are burned. They say that this is done because no book can not offend anyone. There will always be someone who finds a book offensive, and the government thought it would be easier and decided to start getting rid of them and replacing them with televisions and other forms of digital entertainment, wiping emotions from daily lives. It may not necessarily be the government and the firemen who are censoring the people, but the people...
Words: 475 - Pages: 2
...This type of intense heat can also be excessively used in a detrimental manner. In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, the exact symbolism of fire is exceptionally ambiguous but it can be determined from specific parts of the novel. As the story progresses, Montag gradually begins to perceive fire as comforting instead of an obliterating force of destruction. This transformation in Montag’s interpretation of fire is a great example of the obscurity that Bradbury shows in this...
Words: 742 - Pages: 3
