FARENHEIT 451 : THEMES

BOOKS / KNOWLEDGE AS POWER

The books are symbols of knowledge in Fahrenheit 451. This is why the government
makes it a crime to own books, even though the people were voluntarily giving up their
books. Through this theme, Bradbury is emphasizing how getting people to give up their
access to knowledge benefits those who seek to keep the people in a subordinate role.
Those in power don't want the people to have access to knowledge that could one day
lead them to challenge the way things are, which leads to censorship and the
criminalization of knowledge. As long as books are a crime, people won't have access to
knowledge. That makes it easy for those in power to maintain control.

•The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.’” 

“‘Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget.
There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches
of the universe together into one garment for us.’” 

“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning
house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”

•“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn
insane mistakes!”
TECHNOLOGY
As Fahrenheit 451 is a futuristic novel, the role of technology is
another thematic strand that echoes throughout the novel. Television
screens spread over walls present entertainment programs to keep
the women busy. Small radios broadcast everything to the public
ears to keep them busy. Other machines like the mechanical Hounds
were also employed to control or even kill the rebels. Machines have
made people insensitive as they drive the car fast, disregarding the
life of other people. Hence, technology has brought very few
advantages to humanity.”

•“‘ she had both ears pugged with electronic bees that were humming the hour away .’” 
•“The converter attachment, which had cost them one hundred dollars, automatically supplied
her name whenever the announcer addressed his anonymous audience, leaving a blank where
the proper syllables could be filled in.”
•“Abruptly the room took off on a rocket flight into the clouds; it plunged into a lime-green sea
where blue fish at red and yellow fish. A minute later, three White Cartoon Clowns chopped off
each other’s limbs to the accompaniment of immense incoming tides of laughter. Two minutes
more and the room whipped out of town to the jet cars wildly circling an arena, bashing and
backing up and bashing each other again. Montag saw a number of bodies fly in the air.”
DISSATISFACTION
Subtly referenced constantly in Fahrenheit 451 is the theme of
dissatisfaction. This theme not only occurs in individual character's
lives, but in society itself.

•“We get these cases nine or ten a night. Got so many, starting a few years
ago, we had the special machines built.”

•“Anyway, Pete and I always said, no tears, nothing like that. It’s our third
marriage each and we’re independent. Be independent, we always said. He
said, if I get killed off, you just go right ahead and don’t cry, but get married
again and don’t think of me.”

•“We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s

missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the
books I’d burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help”
FARENHEIT 451: FIGURATIVE
LANGUAGE AND DEVICES
ANIMAL IMAGERY
Bradbury uses animal imagery when describing technology and actions in order to show the
perverse lack of the natural in his fictional world—this is a society dominated by,
and harmed by, a total reliance on technology over the natural, a perversion of the ‛natural
order.’
For example, the opening paragraph describes his flamethrower as a ‛great python’:
“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.”
 RHETORICAL QUESTIONS
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a
direct answer.

“Let's burn all offensive materials because it's a good idea. What's the
worst that could happen?”
“Is it because we're having so much fun at home we've forgotten the
world?”
“People want to be happy, isn't that right?”
"Do you ever read any of the books you burn?”
 PERSONIFICATIONS
The novel shows examples of personifications such as,

“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.”
“The brass pole shivered.”
"The firehouse trembled as a great flight of jet planes whistled a single note across a
black morning sky.“
“The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and
yellow feathers."
 SIMILIE

A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two things.

“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.”
“A book alighted, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings
fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy
feather, the words delicately painted thereon. ”
"How like a beautiful statue of ice it was, melting in the sun."