Fahrenheit 451

In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury shows the dangerous effects of government power and employing a dark dramatic serious tone. When the firefighters were called to set fire to a woman’s home and the books inside. Montag inside the house describes the books falling like, “ slaughtered birds, ” and the women standing, “ below like a small girl, among the bodies”(34). Bradbury uses this simile to create an eerie image in a readers mind. Also because in this time in which the book takes place people were told books were bad and unimportant objects that shouldn’t be read. Firefighters were to burn books or essentially “ slaughter” the books and the woman still believing in books and breaking the law was described laying with the dead bodies of the birds showing that she is basically dead too. Showing that the government had an immense power over the people. Later in the book when Montag gets caught for having books and is told to burn down his own home. Montag becomes scared and takes a flamethrower to his boss Beatty. As Montag burns Beatty there is a “ hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, ” and a “ bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail”(113). Montag burns Beatty because the government banned books, and Montag is starting to question why. Bradbury uses similes to paint a vivid image of a gruesome scene. Bradbury also makes this description very dramatic causing a readers to really feel the emotions and that darkness of what Montag did. At the end of the book the city is destroyed by bombs. Montag’s old life is gone everything he knew is gone and he describes the bombing. He says the town is like a mural where the “ top for a bottom, a side for a back, and then the city rolled over dead, ” then he can hear, “ the sound of its [the towns] death” (153). This shows what the government is capable of doing. They aren’t happy what Montag did. So they decided to just bomb and destroy the whole city. Again Bradbury uses a profound way to show the dark serious tone he uses when writing this novel to show the dangerous effect of government powers.