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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
Fahrenheit 451 is set in an unnamed American city, which makes the book more relatable and therefore more startling to many readers, especially Americans. Many of the events take place in a suburb, and the conformity and judgmental attitudes witnessed therein may be a critique of the suburban culture of the day. Suburbs were a relatively new phenomenon when Bradbury wrote this novel, and their rapid growth in the post-WWII period is in part attributed to "white flight" from cities with increasing populations of black migrants from rural areas. Race isn't explicitly discussed in Fahrenheit 451, but otherness and non-conformity are deeply disliked by most of the novel's "normal" characters.
Just as cars would be omnipresent in any real American city or suburb, cars also feature heavily in the urban setting of Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury does not characterize them flatteringly; Guy is nearly murdered by teenagers in a car, and Clarisse was allegedly killed by a car. The dominance of cars over pedestrians makes walking mostly a thing of the past in the novel, and those who walk are automatically suspect. This means much of the novel takes place inside: either in the firehouse, in Guy's home, or in the subway. There's little mention of wildlife or the natural environment.
At the end of the book, Guy escapes from the Mechanical Hound by swimming into the river. He eventually reaches the countryside, where outlaws survive by living a nomadic life. Movement from city to wilderness is a common literary trope most commonly associated with the ancient genre of romance. Accordingly, that movement from city to wilderness can be seen in many pieces of literature (e.g., Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream). However, the fact that Guy doesn't go to the countryside until the end of the book, and never returns to the city, suggests his personal story is just getting started at the end of the book. Accordingly, the wilderness could represent an untamed and still-free place where Guy can finally live authentically.
Related Themes:
