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Paradox
Definition of Personification
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down on the wedding guests, indifferent... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the sentence, "The rain poured down... read full definition
Personification is a type of figurative language in which non-human things are described as having human attributes, as in the... read full definition
Part 1
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:
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.
The personification here means that the books are not simply destroyed. Instead, they "died," which is a more emotionally loaded word choice. The "pigeon-winged" metaphor makes the books sound like gentle animals, inherently innocent and undeserving of their death. These devices provoke sympathy for the books and anger over their burning.
A similar moment occurs later in Part 1, when Guy and the other firefighters burn the unnamed woman's house:
A book lit, 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. […] The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.
A simile compares a book to a "white pigeon," which personifies the book into a gentle and obedient animal. The magazines are like "slaughtered birds" and are personified into having "bodies." Again, the similes, personification, and imagery here make the reader feel pain for the books' plight.
The books-as-birds motif recurs in Part 3, as Guy burns down his own house:
The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.
A simile compares the books to birds once more, but this time it seems the birds are being roasted alive, given that they are dancing as they die. The books metaphorically have wings, and the fire becomes their feathers. This lively language provides the reader with visual imagery of the books' destruction.
Related Themes:
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:
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.
Multiple literary devices here allow the reader to understand how it can be a "pleasure to burn." Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, there is the imagery of fire, things "blackened and changed," and "eaten," as if the fire is hungry. The hose which pumps out kerosene is personified into a "great python" that also seems to enjoy the burning. Finally, a metaphor compares Guy's hands to the hands of a conductor and the fire to a symphony. Burning has come to seem to him like the creation of art, even though it is destruction. It also seems to give him a moment of pleasurable control; like a conductor, he is directing and enjoying all the fiery change.
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—The War:
Throughout Fahrenheit 451, references to the war are both frequent and vague. Planes fly overhead, radios and televisions announce the coming conflict, and characters discuss it. However, no one is worried (including Mildred's friends, who have husbands in the military), and no one has details or seems to care. Who is the war against, and why has fighting begun? This half-explained militarization adds dread to the story.
In Part 2, Guy has a conversation with Mildred in which the motif of the unexplained war comes up explicitly.
“Jesus God,” said Montag. “Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We’ve started and won two atomic wars since 2022! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world?"
Part of Guy's character development throughout the novel comes from his awareness of the uncanny or strange aspects of his society. While many of the characters discuss the war without interest or curiosity, Guy genuinely wants answers in this scene, both about this specific war and America's foreign affairs policy in general.
In Part 2, while Faber is talking to Guy, the motif takes on sonic imagery.
A bomber flight had been moving east all the time they talked, and only now did the two men stop and listen, feeling the great jet sound tremble inside themselves.
The jet's noise seems to shake the men's very insides, in much the same way as constant war permeates this society that nevertheless does not know or care why.
Finally, late in Part 2, Bradbury brings back the war motif with visual imagery and personification:
You could feel the war getting ready in the sky that night. The way the clouds moved aside and came back, and the way the stars looked, a million of them swimming between the clouds, like the enemy disks, and the feeling that the sky might fall upon the city and turn it to chalk dust, and the moon go up in red fire; that was how the night felt.
With this personification, the war itself is an autonomous entity that gathers its powers. The stars are "like enemy disks," and the sky seems as if it will destroy the city below and then itself. Bradbury's use of the second-person pronoun "you," a relatively unusual use in this third-person narrated book, brings the dread and suspense of the upcoming war more directly to the reader. Interestingly, the sky does not actually look like it will fall; instead, it feels like it will fall and the moon will burn. But this feeling is communicated with visual imagery of "chalk dust" and "red fire."
Explanation and Analysis—A Welter of Words:
In Part 2, during a conversation with Guy, Beatty personifies and metaphorizes books.
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.
The novel's narrator and many of the novel's good characters, such as Faber, use literary devices to characterize books as fragile, innocent, and beneficial influences on the world. Beatty does the opposite; he personifies books into duplicitous beings that will betray their readers. He metaphorically compares books first to a moor (a hilly, grassy British habitat), then a welter. The moor comparison suggests a book reader can easily get lost in all the contradictory ideas books present. A "welter" is a big mess of items, and the welter metaphor likewise suggests confusion, as if a reader might not know where to go in the mess of words that makes up a book.
Bradbury allows Beatty time to explain his ideology, which humanizes him. Through the character of Beatty, Bradbury also exposes readers to the counterarguments against books, reading, and knowledge. Although it may seem obvious to modern readers that book burning is bad, organizations and individuals have argued for, and successfully enforced, censorship of all kinds throughout history. One of the arguments in support of censorship does, in fact, suggest that some material will needlessly confuse and mislead readers.
The rest of Fahrenheit 451 allows readers to see the flaws in Beatty's argument, including that he seems to only want books to act as proof for his already-established ideas. His criticism here is that books contain contradicting ideas and can be cited by anyone. Of course, characters like Faber and Granger (and probably Bradbury himself) would assert that it is a blessing, and not a curse, that books can contain any content, since this allows the reader to survey the reasoning behind contradictory views and come to his own conclusion.
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:
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.
This moment is another great example of how Bradbury weaves together literary devices and imagery to create sharp impressions and emotions that the reader feels alongside Guy. This passage personifies Guy's hands into autonomous actors, animal-like and guilty. His hands seem to hide from Beatty in pockets. A simile compares Guy's fingers to ferrets, which are squirmy rodents that hide from predators. Beatty has a metaphorical "alcohol-flame stare," fittingly enough. Beatty's breath might metaphorically kill Guy's hands. In other words, Beatty's attention (his stare, his breath) could reduce Guy to inaction, metaphorized into the death of Guy's hands.
The personification of Guy's hands also serves to separate him from his own actions. His hands cannot act without him; he made the choice to pick up and hide the books. But in this moment of high anxiety, perhaps Guy regrets his choices, blames his hands for the guilt he feels, and seeks to distance himself from his own fingers.
Related Themes:
Part 3
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:
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.
The personification here means that the books are not simply destroyed. Instead, they "died," which is a more emotionally loaded word choice. The "pigeon-winged" metaphor makes the books sound like gentle animals, inherently innocent and undeserving of their death. These devices provoke sympathy for the books and anger over their burning.
A similar moment occurs later in Part 1, when Guy and the other firefighters burn the unnamed woman's house:
A book lit, 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. […] The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.
A simile compares a book to a "white pigeon," which personifies the book into a gentle and obedient animal. The magazines are like "slaughtered birds" and are personified into having "bodies." Again, the similes, personification, and imagery here make the reader feel pain for the books' plight.
The books-as-birds motif recurs in Part 3, as Guy burns down his own house:
The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.
A simile compares the books to birds once more, but this time it seems the birds are being roasted alive, given that they are dancing as they die. The books metaphorically have wings, and the fire becomes their feathers. This lively language provides the reader with visual imagery of the books' destruction.
Related Themes:
