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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Key Examples in Fahrenheit 451
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Symphonies of Burning:
At the beginning of Part 1, Guy enjoys burning down a house. The scene is described vividly through imagery, metaphor, and personification:
It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.
Explanation and Analysis—Candlelight:
When Guy first meets Clarisse in Part 1, her kindness and interest in conversation confuse him. In a stream of consciousness moment, he describes her face with metaphorical language and imagery, and finally has a flashback that reminds him of Clarisse.
Unlock with LitCharts A+He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon. . . .
Explanation and Analysis—Ocean of Sound:
In Part 1, Mildred lays on the bed listening to what we would now call earbuds. Bradbury describes her (and her obsession with mass media) with metaphorical language and imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Closed Eyes:
In Part 1, a disturbed Guy sits in the firehouse while his coworkers play cards. His impressions of the event are relayed in a stream of consciousness style that mimics his half-awake state, and the imagery and metaphor make his experience and doubts vivid even though he is simply sitting still with his eyes closed.
Unlock with LitCharts A+The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse ceiling “. . . one thirty-five, Thursday morning, November 4th, . . . one thirty-six . . . one thirty-seven A.M. . . .” The tick of the playing cards on the greasy table top, all the sounds came to Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected. He could feel the firehouse full of glitter and shine and silence, of brass colors, the colors of coins, of gold, of silver. The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting. “. . . one forty-five. . . .” The voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
One recurring motif in Fahrenheit 451 compares books to birds through similes and metaphors, personification, and imagery. For instance, early in Part 1, Guy conceptualizes of the books he's burning as pigeons:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sand in a Sieve:
In Part 2, Bradbury uses the metaphor of the sand and the sieve to explain Guy's futile-seeming hope that he can read and retain the entirety of the Bible:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!” And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks. Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The War:
Throughout Fahrenheit 451, references to the war are both frequent and vague. Planes fly overhead, radios and televisions announce the coming conflict, and characters discuss it. However, no one is worried (including Mildred's friends, who have husbands in the military), and no one has details or seems to care. Who is the war against, and why has fighting begun? This half-explained militarization adds dread to the story.
In Part 2, Guy has a conversation with Mildred in which the motif of the unexplained war comes up explicitly.
Unlock with LitCharts A+“Jesus God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world?"
Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—Earthquake:
In Part 3, after Guy is done burning down his own house, his reflection on his predicament contains metaphors and imagery.
Unlock with LitCharts A+A great earthquake had come with fire and leveled the house and Mildred was under there somewhere and his entire life under there and he could not move. The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there, his knees half bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand.
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
One recurring motif in Fahrenheit 451 compares books to birds through similes and metaphors, personification, and imagery. For instance, early in Part 1, Guy conceptualizes of the books he's burning as pigeons:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Burned Alive:
In Part 3, when Guy sets fire to Beatty in order to escape, the climactic death scene is described with similes and evocative imagery:
Unlock with LitCharts A+And then [Beatty] was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent.
Explanation and Analysis—Scent:
In Part 3, Guy finds out another Mechanical Hound is now tracking him; Bradbury uses imagery, metaphor, and simile to describe Guy's subsequent panic:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the sweat of his hand hung from the doorknob, invisible but as numerous as the jewels of a small chandelier, he was everywhere, in and on and about everything, he was a luminous cloud, a ghost that made breathing once more impossible.
