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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Ocean of Sound:
In Part 1, Mildred lays on the bed listening to what we would now call earbuds. Bradbury describes her (and her obsession with mass media) with metaphorical language and imagery:
His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.
A simile asserts that Mildred is "like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb." This is deathly imagery, appropriate for Mildred's still body, but she's not even the corpse—she's simply a representation of a body, a carving of one. Her unmoving eyes are metaphorically "fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel," which is another inorganic image that suggests her senses are not attuned to the real world.
Metaphor and imagery also describe the work of the earbuds: "An electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk […] [comes] in on the shore of her unsleeping mind." This extended marine metaphor, appropriate for a device called Seashells, makes the noise of Mildred's earpieces into an ocean. The endlessly noisy ocean crashes into Mildred's mind, which is as solid and simply receptive as a seashore. There is no give and take between her mind and what she hears, only uncritical listening. The ocean metaphor further illustrates this point: the large, impersonal movement of the sonic ocean bears her away.
Related Themes:
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—Closed Eyes:
In Part 1, a disturbed Guy sits in the firehouse while his coworkers play cards. His impressions of the event are relayed in a stream of consciousness style that mimics his half-awake state, and the imagery and metaphor make his experience and doubts vivid even though he is simply sitting still with his eyes closed.
The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse ceiling “. . . one thirty-five, Thursday morning, November 4th, . . . one thirty-six . . . one thirty-seven A.M. . . .” The tick of the playing cards on the greasy table top, all the sounds came to Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected. He could feel the firehouse full of glitter and shine and silence, of brass colors, the colors of coins, of gold, of silver. The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting. “. . . one forty-five. . . .” The voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.
In this stream-of-consciousness moment, Bradbury uses ellipses, lists, and sonic imagery to illustrate Guy's headspace as he thinks. It's not that Guy is thinking of anything, or generating any ideas; instead, the stream of consciousness style is used to show that Guy takes in the impressions around him, feels time moving by slowly, thinks of the firehouse, and doesn't necessarily feel comfortable there.
A metaphor compares Guy's closed eyes to a "barrier he had momentarily erected." Guy tries and fails to find a way to block out the career and society he suddenly finds distasteful—by closing his eyes. Nevertheless, he still imagines the firehouse that surrounds him. Interestingly, Bradbury uses visual imagery to describe the firehouse even though Guy's eyes are closed!
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.
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—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—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—Earthquake:
In Part 3, after Guy is done burning down his own house, his reflection on his predicament contains metaphors and imagery.
A great earthquake had come with fire and leveled the house and Mildred was under there somewhere and his entire life under there and he could not move. The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there, his knees half bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand.
Guy realizes his life has changed forever: he has no home, no wife, and no career now. The metaphor that compares these calamities to an earthquake shows that Guy's life is moving unpredictably and dangerously, and everything he once valued is suddenly gone, just as would be true after a literal earthquake. Nor is the awfulness over, as Guy knows: the earthquake is "still shaking and falling and shivering," movement-based imagery which not only describes his unstable psychological state but also the danger and uncertainty he faces now that his wife has turned him in.
A few more metaphors illustrate his current mindset quickly and vividly. First, his emotions are metaphorically a "load" that weighs him down and paralyzes him. Second, Beatty's words and actions are like being struck; the villain has "hit him without raising a hand" by toying with him, making him burn down his own house, and then arresting him.
Explanation and Analysis—Burned Alive:
In Part 3, when Guy sets fire to Beatty in order to escape, the climactic death scene is described with similes and evocative imagery:
And then [Beatty] was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent.
This scene is full of descriptive, violent imagery that allows readers to imagine Beatty's horrible death. The pain of being burnt alive reduces Beatty to a metaphorical "gibbering manikin." To describe the sound, Bradbury uses a simile: Beatty's flesh makes a "hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove." The simile for the sight is equally gross: Beatty looks like a snail that's had salt poured over it. Finally, Beatty is "like a charred wax doll," a simile that drives home for the reader what death by burning alive has done to this once-strong villain.
The more details Bradbury adds here, the more horrified, fascinated, and invested the reader can be in the spectacle of Beatty's death. These devices heighten the drama of the scene and even provoke sympathy for Beatty.
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—Scent:
In Part 3, Guy finds out another Mechanical Hound is now tracking him; Bradbury uses imagery, metaphor, and simile to describe Guy's subsequent panic:
Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the sweat of his hand hung from the doorknob, invisible but as numerous as the jewels of a small chandelier, he was everywhere, in and on and about everything, he was a luminous cloud, a ghost that made breathing once more impossible.
It seems unlikely Guy can literally smell himself. However, his realization of the danger he is in, and his plan to escape it by hiding his scent, is made much sharper by this metaphorical moment where he imagines he can smell what the Mechanical Hound will. A simile compares his sweat to the "jewels of a small chandelier," an image that helps the reader visualize the microscopic evidence Guy hopes to cover up. Guy is metaphorically "everywhere, in and on and about everything," which descriptively shows the difficulty of erasing scent humans themselves cannot smell. Additional metaphors compare Guy to a "luminous cloud" and a "ghost." These devices show his justified paranoia about his scent, and they also illustrate for the reader how Guy thinks about his predicament and logics out a way to solve it.
Finally, note the rambling, long sentence. It's technically a run-on sentence, but Bradbury's purpose in flaunting grammatical convention is to mirror, with the rhythm of the hurried sentence, the panic Guy feels.
