FAHRENHEIT 451 NOTES

Simile: Clarisse is compared to a clock. The clock is symbolic because Clarisse is telling him that time is running out and that it is time that he  do something. Her eyes are like a mirror. She shows him what he can be and she is intriguing. Another simile is she is like a marionette show. Montag wants to know why Clarisse knows so much. His bedroom is a cold marble tomb. "Mausoleum" The room symbolizes a tomb. His marriage is down the drain and there is nothing left. Montag is willing to give and his wife isn't. Marriage changes but when you make the commitment, it doesn't change. 

Allusion:

Metaphor: "The brass nozzle is a great python in his fist" The brass nozzle is spitting the venomous (poison) kerosene. This gives us a tone of dislike and distrust of firemen. Montag is burning history. "The pigeon winged books," Montag is killing something that is alive.  

Symbols: "451" The temperature at which paper burns.

Montag is like a sieve because the information from the bible he is trying to memorize is going right through his head. 

The commercial is more powerful because it is easier to understand. 

Faber was an English professor in the 1950's. 

He is a coward and is intellectual. He says that books cannot save people but books can make you think. He says that books remind us of what fools we are. 

Faber is going to go to a printer in St. Louis to copy the bible. Faber is the Mentor for Montag. 

The phoenix is a type of bird that symbolizes rebirth and the people. This symbolizes a type of achievement.  The water and the river symbolizes new life. A baptism. We go from death to life. Montag throws off his old clothes and puts on Faber's new clothes. He looses his identity. He now has cleansed himself and had a rebirth. A river is never really a river.