Previous
Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Key Examples in Fahrenheit 451
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—The McClellan Family:
The McClellan family, and especially Clarisse, serve as a foil for Guy, his family, and his coworkers. Since the novel is mainly written from Guy's point of view, the way Clarisse's family is described indicates what Guy finds unusual about them, and therefore what the norm is for "normal" citizens of this dystopia. For instance, in Part 1, the McClellans are described like this:
Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly. Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness. Montag heard the voices talking, talking, talking, giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web.
Related Themes:
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—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—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—A Book Is a Gun:
Throughout the novel, Beatty voices many arguments against books. Bradbury uses him as a mouthpiece for censorship so that readers can better understand how a dystopia like this might form, and what supposed benefits its strict censorship is meant to have. In Part 1, for instance, Beatty uses metaphors and similes to argue that books are a malign influence.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Unlocked Doors:
In Part 1, the firemen's destruction of the woman's house is described with metaphorical language and characterized by situational irony.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Next thing they were up in musty blackness swinging silver hatchets at doors that were, after all, unlocked, tumbling through like boys all rollick and shout. “Hey!” A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stairwell. How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle.
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:
Unlock with LitCharts A+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—Melting Smile:
In Part 1, after Guy has spoken to Clarisse, his increasing disillusionment is described with metaphors and similes:
Unlock with LitCharts A+He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—A Welter of Words:
In Part 2, during a conversation with Guy, Beatty personifies and metaphorizes books.
Unlock with LitCharts A+What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—This Book Has Pores:
Fahrenheit 451 contains many philosophical discussions of art, and especially literature. In Part 2, Faber uses metaphoric language and imagery to describe to Guy how he sees books:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are.
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—Guilty Hands:
In Part 2, Guy's guilty conscience over stealing and keeping books is described through the personification of his hands:
Unlock with LitCharts A+In Beatty’s sight, Montag felt the guilt of his hands. His fingers were like ferrets that had done some evil and now never rested, always stirred and picked and hid in pockets, moving from under Beatty’s alcohol-flame stare. If Beatty so much as breathed on them, Montag felt that his hands might wither, turn over on their sides, and never be shocked to life again; they would be buried the rest of his life in his coat sleeves, forgotten.
Related Themes:
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—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—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—The Phoenix:
In Part 3, Granger alludes to the ancient, cross-cultural myth of the Phoenix.
Unlock with LitCharts A+There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.
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.
