"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."- Ray Bradbury, “Coda”
Guy Montag: Montag is the protagonist of Bradbury’s novel. Though at the beginning of the story he is little more than a fireman who lives without thinking or feeling, by the end of the novel, he is transformed into a true human—someone who realizes the value of knowledge. He changes from a fireman dedicated to burning books, to a wandering refugee devoted to their preservation.
Mildred: Mildred is the wife of Montag who acts more like a robot than a person. She is obsessed with television, and shuts out feelings of love and remorse. At one time, she attempts suicide, but is unsuccessful.
Beatty: Beatty is Montag’s fire captain. Though he is well read in literature, he chooses to burn books because he feels betrayed by them. Beatty seems to be the mastermind, if there is one, behind government censorship. He is not a robot like Montag, but a man who consciously chooses to do evil.
Clarisse McClellan: Clarisse is the next-door neighbor of Montag who is silenced by the government for living independently and learning the true meaning of life. Her influence on Montag at the beginning of the story is profound; because of her, Montag decides to start reading for himself.
Faber: Faber, not coincidentally the name of a pencil-making company, is the elderly retired professor who helps Montag escape the city. He also serves as a mentor to Montag, teaching him what he knows about the value of books. On a metaphorical level, Faber symbolizes the tool (as his name implies) of learning.
Mechanical Hound: The Hound is a computerized animal used by the government to punish its enemies, such as Montag. Though Montag torches the first Hound, a second one is brought in to track him. The Hound represents the strong hand of dictatorship.
Stoneman/Black: These are minor characters only seen briefly by the reader. They are Montag’s fellow firemen, and have faces blackened by the smoke and soot of their occupation. Eventually, Montag plants a book in Black’s house so that other firemen will burn it to the ground.
Mrs. Phelps/Mrs. Bowles: These women are also minor character are the friends of Mildred who are appalled when Montag reads them poetry.
Granger: Granger is seen in the last few pages of the work. He is the leader of the resistance movement that Montag joins. He has deep knowledge of literature and the world in general. His goal is to preserve classical knowledge.
Salamander: The Salamander insignia represents the firemen of Bradbury’s brave new world. Bradbury uses the Salamander to exemplify the decrepit nature of the government. This society, like a salamander, has sunk into the depths of depravity, and now, though seemingly modern, is really more primitive than ever.
Seashells: The seashells, or ear-radios, are used to promote the propaganda of the government and advance its agenda, or lack thereof. Using these shells, the people drift off to sea, so to speak, and lose sight of reality.
Parlor family/television: This artificial family embodies the quality that the government seeks most to promote in its people: superficiality. The parlor family knows nothing of reality, but instead is focused on temporal pleasures. Like the seashells, the televised
family serves as a distraction and a mindless way to occupy man’s mind.
Montag: It’s interesting to note that the name Montag is actually the name of a paper manufacturing company. In many ways, Montag is a blank slate who picks up bits of knowledge from Clarisse, Faber, and finally Granger. Bradbury chuckles about this “coincidence” in his afterword to Fahrenheit 451.
Faber: Faber is the name of a pencil manufacturing company. Bradbury also chuckles about this in his afterword. In many ways, Faber, the instructing professor, is like a pencil, writing on Montag’s notepad. On a metaphorical level, Faber symbolizes the tool (as his name implies) of learning.
Fire: Fire is an artificial substitute for the reality of truth, which can only be found in books. Beatty dedicates his life to burning when he can’t find satisfaction in the books he reads.
Mechanical Hound: The Hound is a computerized animal used by the government to punish its enemies, such as Montag. Though Montag torches the first Hound, a second one is brought in to track him. The Hound represents the strong hand of dictatorship. It is the enforcer of government policy.
Beatty: If there is one, Beatty represents the mastermind behind government censorship. He is not a robot like Montag, but a man who consciously chooses to do evil.
Sieve and Sand: The Sieve and the Sand image is used by Bradbury to explain Montag’s goal to learn the knowledge he reads in books. Like sand falling through a sieve, Montag thinks that if he reads fast enough, at least some of the books’ wisdom will be retained before it falls through the sieve of his mind.
Nature: Throughout his novel, Bradbury uses allusions to nature to symbolize reality or truth. When Montag reaches land, after floating down the river to escape, he experiences the sensation of smell for the first time. The lifestyle of the wandering resistance also
exemplifies this idea. They live with nature, out in the country away from the city, where they experience reality.
http://www.novelguide.com/fahrenheit451/metaphoranalysis.html
1) Beatty, explaining the history of censorship and periods of human education: “Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries of more.”
2) Beatty, touting the role of technology in man’s aim to abolish individual thought: “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a mechanical hour.”
3) The captain continues by defending the moral aims of the ideal of censorship: “Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.”
4) Beatty, explaining the need to cremate the dead to make the living loose their memory: “Forget them. Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”
5) Montag asserts, “Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damn insane mistakes!” In this way, Montag sees books not only as helpful tools, but as vital agents of salvation for his diseased world.
6) When Mrs. Bowles rejects Montag’s “poetry lesson,” the fireman can restrain himself no longer. He tells her, “Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it?”
7) Beatty continues his attack, saying to Montag, “[Fire’s] real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you’re a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later.”
8) Montag gets the last laugh when he turns to Beatty’s dead body and says, “You always said, don’t face a problem, burn it. Well, now I’ve done both. Good-bye, Captain.”
9) Montag realizes his own special role in the rebirth of thinking that must occur if the world is to go on. Bradbury narrates, “Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and the keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people’s heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches.”
10) Granger reflects over the city’s destruction, saying, “We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.” He goes on, “But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn’t use what we got out of them.”