fahrenheit 451 essay

A society hooked on TV, and police forces that harass and punish independent thinkers, all of this in a book that takes the reader for a spin in a chaotic, new world. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the main character, Guy Montag, starts off politically correct, hating books, burning them without a twinge of guilt. The reason he burns books is because he is the new type of firefighter, where they burns books instead of putting out fires. Also, the law enforces the people of the city to never have books in their possession. Then, he meets a quirky young girl who confesses she likes to read. Curiosity overtakes him, and he starts stealing a book or two, here and there, before burning the rest. By the end of the story, his buddies from the fire department are ransacking his home, finding all of his hidden stashes of books, and he's running for his life. He is rescued, and finds his way to this community of people, each one of whom have chosen a book to memorize. While writing this novel, Bradbury made many decisions to make an intense story with a shocking message for the readers.
One of the choices he made in the book was where he set the story. The setting of the story is in the future where no one is permitted to have books and think for themselves. It is a time period that the reader is most likely not familiar with, so it makes it harder to imagine what it is actually like. If the setting was set in the present day it would not require much thinking or imagining and the story would not make much sense. So, the reader may interpret this time period differently than others. It lets the reader take one aspect of the story and make it his or hers own. For example, Bradbury takes the reader through the main character's high tech home with a virtual family on the television. That is something that today, does not exist so again it forces the reader to imagine. The setting choice is how the author let the story truly make sense and flow into the reader’s mind with making them think about the story.
Imagery is another decision that Bradbury chose to incorporate that made the book a lot more dramatic and interesting. Throughout the book, there are many images that help to create the eerily futuristic and gloomy mood. In the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, the sky is full of helicopters and it makes the reader feel almost uneasy and on edge. Oftentimes in the story, there is a lot of imagery that isn't very significant or a lot that is significant; some of the material foreshadows and implies something else. For example, the author describes at one point, the way the wind moves or how the air smells. This example is not the most significant piece of imagery but is still impacts the book. The author uses it so that the reader can get a better feeling of what is going on in the background. Imagery is also used to help the reader get an in depth look into the actions of the characters. It is something that would certainly draw the attention of the careful reader. Again, imagery gives more attention to the text and helps to develop the mood.
Lastly, symbolism was another obvious choice Bradbury made to make this book an interesting one for the reader. One symbol in the book was fire. As one might expect about a book about fire, it incorporates a lot of fire. It represents how the people of the futuristic city mind's are being tarnished in flames with the books that are being destroyed by the futuristic firemen. This symbolism affects the story by making the reader think more. Fire also can be used as a symbol of anger and aggression. For example, we see in the book that people and states are angry, and when people are angry, they are burning with rage at each other and states are going to war with each other. Symbolism reaches into readers’ minds and hearts and touches them in ways they didn’t foresee. Think about if books were taken away from the world. That could effect on how people learn and their understanding of all kinds of situations. Think if people went to war with one another, it would break the peace in daily life. Symbols in the book also make it a more relatable story. This makes the novel all more powerful to the reader.
Again, Ray Bradbury pieced together a suspenseful and interesting book, but could not have portrayed it any better than without some of the choices he made. The main and most obvious choices to me, which impacted me as the reader, were the setting, imagery, and symbolism. Overall, I think that Fahrenheit 451 was a great book and I would recommend it because it's written so well, and has such a good storyline. In Fahrenheit 451, the lack of physical communication and relations between people due to the increase of technology, citizens are isolated, which in turn destroys the society as they seem to know it. It forces the reader in many situations to simply sit there and comprehend what just happened. Its powerful symbols, imagery and setting, tie in to make a shocking yet relatable story for the young adult.