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Figurative Language In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Decent Essays

Would you rather have awareness of the world around you or just be completely oblivious? In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, you clearly don't have a choice. Bradbury uses figurative language, symbolism, and biblical references in the book to express Bradbury’s concern about how powerful governments manipulate citizens. Bradbury uses figurative language to express his concern about how powerful governments manipulate citizens. For instance, when everyone was watching the chase, the announcer says, “Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows… He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like grey animals peering from electric caves, faces with grey colourless eyes, grey tongues and grey thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face“ (131-132). The figurative language used in the context is a simile, comparing the people looking outside to grey animals, with grey faces, that are mindless and obedient. The color gray is referred to the blandness people have become used to. Everyone is grey, dissatisfied and ordinary. Just like if they were like mindless pets, obeying what they were being told to do by their owner. The government is the owner of the pet (people), being forced to obey the government's commands. Bradbury uses symbolism to express his concern about how powerful governments manipulate citizens. For instance, when Granger turns on the portable TV, “a man turned a corner… The helicopter light shot down a dozen brilliant pillars that built a cage all about the man… The innocent man stood bewildered… He glanced up at the sky and the wailing sirens… ‘Montag, don't move!’… The victim was seized by the Hound… Blackout. Silence. Darkness… an announcer on the dark screen said, ‘The search is over, Montag is dead; a crime against society has been avenged" (142). The pursuit of the innocent man symbolizes the government's power that it holds over citizens. The government depicts what they want the citizens to understand, instead of the real truth. The government knew that if

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