Fahrenheit 451 the novel

The Meanings of Fire in Fahrenheit 451

Some symbols are very powerful and can be used in books to represent many things . Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book about censorship that uses fire as a symbol . Even the name of the book is meaningful because that is the temperature at which book burns . In Fahrenheit 451 , fire has multiple meanings and can stand for destruction , cleansing , and change . Fire can be used to symbolize these things for both good and evil and so it plays a very important and complicated

role in the book

The story of Fahrenheit 451 is set in the future . Its main character is Guy Montag , who is a fireman ' Unlike our firemen , in the novel a fireman ' is a person who starts fires rather than extinguishing them The role of a fireman is to locate and burn books because Montag 's society has outlawed books and reading . In the beginning of the book Montag is a loyal and valued fireman who has never questioned the morality of the banning of books . Eventually he meets a woman who tells him that people used to read books and firemen used to put out fires not start them . This forces Montag to start thinking about the system that he has been supporting . After this Montag begins to see many problems with the system and even sees that some people are willing to risk their lives for their books

Montag becomes so curious that he begins to steal books . He hides them in his house and reads them when he has the chance . His wife is horrified and finally the firemen come to raid his house . He narrowly escapes and ends up in a colony of outcasts who memorize books to ensure that even if every book in the world is burned , great literature will not be lost

The firemen and the people fighting against them both use fire to symbolize cleansing , but they are each hoping to cleanse different things . Captain Beatty and the firemen want to use fire to cleanse the world of knowledge , a thing that they think is evil . They want to use fire to erase people 's memories and problems . That is why Captain Beatty thinks people should be cremated after they are dead . Captain Beatty believes that fire can destroy anything and make problems disappear . When he explains that cremation is important to make people forget the dead , he says that they should Forget them . Burn all , burn everything . Fire is bright and fire is clean (60 . He thinks that the only way to have a peacefully and happy society is to make people forget the past and ignore or forget anything that they do not like

After something is burned , all that remains are ashes , and you cannot tell what the thing was . Captain Beatty thinks that if you cannot tell what the problem was , it will be completely destroyed and you will not have it anymore . Captain Beatty...