Analysis of Literary and Narrative Elements in Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 undoubtedly exemplifies all Bradburian storytelling qualities. Firstly, it is set in a timeless, nameless yet highly futuristic world, whose nightmarish traits are hyperbolic inflations of the horrors America itself was experiencing. His world-building is rich in both the breadth and complexity of the details. Secondly, the arc is ultimately that of a solitary protagonist who struggles to renovate himself and subvert his prison while the ending is as intangible and confusing as Bradbury’s story can get. Thirdly, on the perspective and character development, one may even draw the correlation between Fahrenheit’s narrative and Joseph Campbell’s A Hero’s Journey, a work of in-depth mythology and literature analysis. Fahrenheit's three chapters uncoincidentally correlate with Campbell’s three key phases: (1) departure, the call to the adventure of thoughts hidden in books in The Hearth and The Salamander, (2) initiation, or The Sieve and The Sand, with encounters and trials that from Guy’s perspective and quest, and (3) return, where the protagonist began a fight to change his world in chapter Three Burning Lights. In essence, Bradbury masterfully incorporated classic, mythological, and historical epic techniques into his masterwork. Moreover, Ray’s skills as a novelist are further solidified by his exploration of Guy’s internal and external relationships as well as interactions, deploying the stream of consciousness technique, monologues and dialogues, and exposition incredibly flexibly. Finally, a distinct characteristic of the novel is its inversion and parallel between characters, predominantly between the protagonist and Beaty, the antagonistic figure, whose qualities mirror Montag but choices polarize.

Artistically, Fahrenheit 451 is vividly dynamic, with portions submerged in poetic, lyrical legatos, contrasted by dark, haunting, angry staccato resemblant of Mozart’s Queen of The Night: the contrast between the rhetorical “Did it drink of darkness? […] What did the Eye see?” and the monolithic, monosyllabic “Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh!”. Enriched by onomatopoeia and synesthesia, imbued in expressiveness by metaphors, similes, and personifications, readers’ senses are always invoked and wrapped in a sublime three-dimensional picture. As an instance, the line “mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper.” draws constant imagery, sounds, and smells from those devices to signify the spiritual malnourishment of the people and accentuate their grim, dull, ghostly sustenance. Moreover, Bradbury created poetic rhythms, vocal dynamic, and musicality with his combination of elongated aestheticist Proustian and terse minimalist Hemingway prose, along with repetition (“Cream-tile, Jet-black, Cream-tile, Jet-black”) and alliteration (“Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice”). The last prominent literary device in Fahrenheit is allusions, with which Ray Bradbury brought the world and history of literature to his pages, through “I am Plato’s Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus.”, through “Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. . .”, which alludes to the ancient Greek tale of Icarus, through “All isn’t well with the world” from Robert Browning’s Pippa Passes, or through “Sweet food of sweetly uttered knowledge” from Sidney’s The Defense of Poetry, etc.

From an intricate and interwoven system of figurative literary devices, along with narrative techniques, Ray Bradbury formed an array of motifs and allegories about biblical paradoxes, nature, and religion that are present throughout the book. The masterpiece is also illuminated with symbolisms of blood, reflections, the sieve, the sand, the hearth, the salamander.

However, as implied by the name Fahrenheit 451 - the temperature at which paper burns, the most important metaphysical elements of the novel were the books and fire. “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.” Throughout Fahrenheit 451, the role of fire constantly shifted: In Montag’s description, it is both a destructive force of nature and an artistic expression, a “python” and a “symphony”. Under closer scrutiny, the fire changes from being the tool of oppression, violence, and demolition in the beginning to a liberating power, in the end, a purifying bath, a Phoenix that rises from her death, a reserve of knowledge held by Prometheus - sacrilegious yet divine all at once. In certain ways, Bradbury took the greatest invention of mankind, the most religiously affiliated token, and ironically put it in a dying, self-rejecting society, making it both a damn and a savior of that world. Similarly, the books in Fahrenheit grow from a feared abomination to a curiosity, to an adventure, and finally, an essence of the mind that cannot be severed but ought to be revered. The books stand for the collective of our will, liberties, inquisitiveness, but at the same time, mortalize those things, reminding us that our best qualities are as delicate and fragile as papers - ready to irrevocably burst should we not preserve them.

Each symbolism, allegory, and motif serves a unique purpose, exemplified and simplified through the flames and books. Together, however, they weave the magical silk thread that connects the outer - the ornamental words, the construct, the structure - to the innermost values of Fahrenheit 451: the true meaning, the content, the themes, the messages and the philosophical bedrocks hidden deep beneath.

All those literary and narrative elements constitute the three most prominent themes of Fahrenheit: censorship, complicit complacency, and the dominance of technology. In turn, those themes harbor a realist value of reflecting its times and retelling their own contextual, historical inspirations: the post-war terrors, the rise of technology, the anti-communist sentiments, and the consequent unprecedented surveillance and control of the government. However, the parable is ever-so-prescient, as its arguments against totalitarianism, obstruction of individuality, the complacency of the masses, and the dependence on media, only grow more relevant as humanity progresses.