Ray Bradbury uses symbolism to highlight the importance of staying true to yourself and maintaining your identity. He shows the consequences of conformity, and uses imagery to express the difficulties that accompany individualism. Each of the characters in Fahrenheit 451 represent a different danger preventing Montag from being himself and from discovering his own identity. However, there are some people and things in the books and symbolize a positive result of individualism. Bradbury uses various devices to show the importance of being yourself, even when you’re drowning in a world of conformity.
The most important symbol becomes apparent very quickly: books. Books represent individualism. Every fight occurs because of books, they are the center of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Montag beliefs that books are terrible and must be burned; he is being controlled by conformity. However, after he experience the woman burning herself, and after he meets Clarisse, he changes his mind. The woman who killed herself for her books represents the fatal danger of choosing to be yourself: conformity will burn you and your identity. Clarisse, too, represent the death of individualism. Her death was a result of her being different. Before she died, she told Montag, “I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other” (Bradbury 27). This is similar to how teenagers “kill” each others individuality using conformity.
The looming threats of conformity are shown through the hound, the fire, and technology. The technology is the primary danger. It is made is mass, there is no differences between any of the TVs in almost all of the communities homes. Technology is the ultimate destruction of individualization. Next comes fire, which acts upon destroying the general differences. The fire destroyed books, in a sense destroying the books owner’s identity. However the fire doesn’t completely kill the person, it only kills a part of them. The hound is the ultimate danger; it is the one who kills the person. In Montag’s world, it literally kills people, but though symbolism, it only kills their spirit, their personal identity.
While these dangers are often victorious, there are always the occasions that someone survives them. This rare survivor inspires hope for everyone, as Montag says after he sees the woman burn herself, “There must be something in books, things we can imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house, there must be something there, You don’t stay for nothing” (Bradbury 48). Once he sees the woman who defeated the conformity (yes, she died but she died as herself) he is inspired to fight for himself. Both the burning woman and Clarisse light the spark inside of Montag. Usually that is all we need, someone to inspire us. We all have the drive to be ourselves, but we need someone to light the passion within, we need a push.
The less obvious and important symbols are the ones that show us what happens when we give in to conformity. Montag’s wife, Mildred, is the epitome of the modern housewife. She doesn’t work but spends her days inside the parlor room, watching TV with her “family” (she calls the actors in the show her family). Occasionally she will have some friends over so they can all watch TV together. But they have mindless conversations, and they are completely unaware that anything is wrong, although they are all suicidal. She is the perfect citizen, according to the government. All of the firefighters at the station represent something similar to Mildred; they are perfect citizens. Ignorant and brain-washed into believing that books must be burned, they symbolize those that have given into conformity, and they are comforted by it. Montag recognizes the conformity first in the way all the fireman look, “Had he ever seen a fireman that didn’t have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror images of himself!” (Bradbury 30). In order to conquer conformity, one must first recognize that there is a problem.
