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Dramatic Irony
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Candlelight:
When Guy first meets Clarisse in Part 1, her kindness and interest in conversation confuse him. In a stream of consciousness moment, he describes her face with metaphorical language and imagery, and finally has a flashback that reminds him of Clarisse.
He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity but—what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently flattering light of the candle. One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon. . . .
Guy looks at Clarisse, trying to understand what is special about her. Bradbury often uses a stream of consciousness style to help the reader imagine Guy's train of thought, and this moment is no different. Guy describes Clarisse's face and demeanor increasingly impressionistically and abstractly, then finally slips into a flashback that ends with an ellipsis.
First, her face is described with imagery. Her eyes metaphorically are "two shining drops of bright water" that reflect an image of Guy back to himself, then they are "violet amber." Amber captures bugs and suspends them, just as Guy feels somehow captured and understood by Clarisse. Her face is first metaphorically "fragile milk crystal," then has the "light of a candle." It is this candlelight metaphor that sends Guy into his flashback about his mother. Unlike other literal and metaphorical fire in the novel, candles do not indicate destruction. Here, Guy's fond memory of candlelight, and his preference for it over "hysterical" electric light, could be read as connected to a larger distrust of mass media and other new technologies in the novel.
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sand in a Sieve:
In Part 2, Bradbury uses the metaphor of the sand and the sieve to explain Guy's futile-seeming hope that he can read and retain the entirety of the Bible:
Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!” And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks. Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve.
This metaphor is also a flashback, and it contains vivid imagery of the hot beach and young Guy's despair. Guy himself makes the flashback into a metaphor for his attempt to understand and appreciate literature when books are not meant to exist. He has very little time and safety, so much to read, and no guarantee it'll stick in his mind. Guy is of two minds in this moment. He believes reading the Bible will be futile, and yet he's tempted to try it anyway, to see if "some of the sand will stay in the sieve."
Related Themes:
Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—Too Much:
In Part 3, after Guy has undergone an immense amount of trauma, Bradbury describes Guy's mental breakdown with fragmented flashbacks and similes in a stream of consciousness style.
His flesh gripped him and shrank as if it had been plunged in acid. He gagged. He saw Beatty, a torch, not moving, fluttering out on the grass. He bit at his knuckles. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh God, sorry. . . . He tried to piece it all together, to go back to the normal pattern of life a few short days ago before the sieve and the sand, Denham’s Dentifrice, moth voices, fireflies, the alarms and excursions, too much for a few short days, too much, indeed, for a lifetime.
The passage starts with a simile which describes Guy's physiological reaction to all the stress he's under: "his flesh [...] shrank as if it had been plunged in acid." After this, the writing moves back and forth from brief flashbacks (such as his memory of Beatty's death) and Guy's present reaction to the stress he's undergoing, such as biting his knuckles. Bradbury renders this moment in fragmented prose, a stream of consciousness combination of unexplained and contextless phrases and images. Guy tries verbal and physical coping mechanisms, but he cannot order his thoughts, as reflected by the writing style. These devices, used in conjunction, plunge readers deep into Guy's inner turmoil.
