Imagine living in a world where you are not in control of your own thoughts. Imagine living in a world in which all the great thinkers of the past have been blurred from existence. Imagine living in a world where life no longer involves beauty, but instead a controlled system that the government is capable of manipulating. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, such a world is brought to the awareness of the reader through a description of the impacts of censorship and forced conformity on people living in a futuristic society. In this society, all works of literature have become a symbol of unnecessary controversy and are outlawed. Individuality and thought is outlawed. The human mind is outlawed. All that is left is a senseless society, unaware of their path to self-destruction, knowing only what the government wants them to know. By telling a tale of a world parallel to our own, Bradbury warns us of a future we are on a path to - a future of mind manipulation, misused technology, ignorance, and hatred. He challenges the reader to remain open-minded by promoting individualism, the appreciation of literature, the defiance of censorship and conformity, and most importantly, change.

Perhaps the most effective of Bradbury's methods in the portrayal of his theme is symbolism. Throughout the story, almost every object and situation seems to serve a purpose in the representation of Bradbury's dystopian society and its change from it (Amis 68). The most symbolic of such objects is fire. Bradbury's use of fire throughout the story is, like Montag's character, very dynamic. All through the story, the meaning, emotional reaction to, and use of fire is changed, until its final use in the "rebirth" of society. Using fire, "Bradbury frames the dominant themes of degradation, metamorphosis, and rebirth" (Wildmann 1). Most of this change is shown through the character of Montag, who starts as a fireman. But unlike today's firemen, Montag burns books and sees fire as the only solution to problems until he is later "enlightened" and escapes the norms of society. At the start of the novel, fire seems to be directly associated with the image of destruction. The description of pages being consumed and blackened by flames in the opening of the book serves to place a predisposed image of fire as evil and destructive. The sole use of fire to annihilate the knowledge and opinions associated with books shows that its only intent is to destroy. It destroys books, it destroys homes, it destroys lives, it destroys Captain Beatty, it destroys Montag's house, and in the end, it destroys the city from which Montag barely escapes. Fire's representation in Bradbury's dystopian society is censorship. Since, in Fahrenheit 451, books are burned to keep any controversial information from reaching the minds of the passive citizens, it becomes evident that fire is ultimately the censoring force. The link that Bradbury makes between the initial representation and description of fire shows that his message is that censorship is destructive. But fire's purpose seems to take a turning point in the novel after Montag's "awakening" realization about the need to express his thoughts among a society of conformists. Fire is then seen as a symbol of rebirth and purification. Even Beatty himself, captain of the firemen, believes that, "fire is bright, and fire is clean" (Bradbury 54), showing the uniquely cleansing property of flames. Fire allows something to be wiped-out completely and changed, allowing a fresh new start - the start of a new society. When Montag sets his own house ablaze, he undergoes an uncommon emotional experience, in which he views the fire as a new starting point, a change in his life. Even the opening of the book claims, "It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed" (Bradbury 3). Also, Bradbury's frequent reference to the Phoenix, as on Beatty's helmet and car, as well as its reference by Granger at the end of the book, serves as a metaphor to this rebirth. The Phoenix was a mythical bird of ancient Egypt that, after its five hundred-year existence, consumes itself in flames and is reborn from its own ashes (Sisario 105). The resurrection of the Phoenix signifies the cyclical nature of human life and civilization. Beatty is burned to death, and his death by fire symbolically illustrates the rebirth that is associated with his Phoenix sign. At the end of the book, one of the book-saving outlaws, Granger, refers to the Phoenix and claims that:

nspiration to convey the themes involved in the novel resulted mainly from the social situation of the time. First of all, the novel was written shortly after World War II and increasing numbers of authors began writing about serious topics. Also, the invention of the atom bomb had aroused the Cold War and the use of technology as a form of destruction (Touponce 124). Seeing technology as a potential threat to the well-being of mankind, Bradbury uses Fahrenheit 451 to state his distrust for it in the novel, which explains why the devices are depicted as "chilling, impersonal gadgets of mechanized anti-culture," (Mogen 141). Also, as the television was becom

Some common words found in the essay are:
Mechanical Hound, Clarisse McClellan, McCarthyism Americans, Stoneman Black, Tom Bradford, Ray Bradbury, Captain Beatty, Phoenix Beatty's, Hearth Salamander, Bradbury's Fahrenheit, mechanical hound, fahrenheit 451, hound society, imagine living, living world, story takes, imagine living world, book serves, existence imagine living, novel written, bradbury 20, touponce 124, bradbury's dystopian society, representation bradbury's dystopian,
Approximate Word count = 3548
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)