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Imagery In Fahrenheit 451

Decent Essays

Bradbury uses sensory details, such as associating imagery with characters and events to make the book a symbolic dystopia to reveal the meaning behind these images. First, Bradbury provides images involving fire and burning as well as images of light and running water throughout the book to describe Montag.
“He saw the moon low in the sky now. The moon there and the light of the moon caused by what? By the sun of course. And what lights the sun? Its own fire. And the sun goes on, day after day, burning and burning. The sun and time. The sun and time and burning. Burning. The river bobbled him along gently. Burning. The sun and every clock on the earth. It all came together and became a single thing in his mind. After a long time of floating …show more content…

First, the book is a response to the Cold War atmosphere and is full of sarcastic ideas. The novel’s sarcasm is directed not at a specific government institutions but at nonintellectuals and cramped materialism posing as social philosophy, justifying book burning in the service of a degraded democratic idea (Mogen 1). Fahrenheit 451 depicts a society in which burning books have caused social philosophy to turn into nightmare. Second, Bradbury uses the firemen in the book as a metaphor to represent satire. The firemen represent both the charismatic seductiveness of demagoguery and a perversion of the community values of Green Town, Bradbury’s symbol of the American tradition at its best (Mogen 1). Bradbury uses a manipulative approach by using firemen to show how they make citizens turn away from their rational thinking. Third, Bradbury exaggerates what burning books may cause to the new society. The book’s conception was inspired by the horrors of Hitler, that to burn books is to burn people (Mogen 2). Bradbury uses the theories of old dictators to show how burning books can take a toll on the citizens of the new society. On the whole, these satirical ideas provide a feeling of shock and realization that the world we live in today is being taken over by technology and we are to oblivious to notice

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