intellectual deadness. The example from Lilliput is an excellent one for him to choose, since it represents an absurd
situation taken to a gross exaggeration, a basic device of satire.
As Guy and his wife read on, a quotation is taken directly from Boswell's
Life of Johnson:
We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop there is at last a
drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.
Guy makes the point that this quote brings to his mind the girl next door, Clarisse McClennan,
who was labeled a
"time bomb" by Beatty because she was a sensitive, observant person who questioned society, and was consequently
eliminated by the government. Montag made an emotional attachment to Clarisse, an attachment that was sincere
and true in a world hostile to honesty. It was his relationship with Clarisse that was for Guy the first "drop"; she
started his questioning of the status quo, and subsequent events after her death made Guy think and question more
and more seriously, until he completely breaks away from his diseased society at the end of the novel.
Guy continues to read and quotes again from Boswell, this time from a letter to Temple in 1763: "That favourite
subject, Myself." Curiously enough, Guy's wife Mildred, who has not received any inspiration from this secret
reading session, says that she understands this particular quote. Her statement is juxtaposed against Guy's saying that
Clarisse's favorite subject wasn't herself, but others. He realizes the truth of the statements he has been reading from
authors who wrote hundreds of years ago; his wife can only understand the literal level of one statement, the one
reflecting the self-interest of her society.
The only other direct quote Bradbury employs from literature comes in the second part of the book,
and serves to
underscore the emptiness of the world that the three preceding quotes have shown. After Guy returns from having
visited Faber, he talks with his wife and two of her friends. The conversation of the women reflects the shallowness
of the women's thinking, since they are the products of this empty culture. Their discussion of politics, for example,
has to do with voting for a candidate for president because he was better looking than his opponent. Guy has a book
of poetry with him, and Mildred's visitors are shocked that he has a book. In a scene reminiscent of the banquet in
Macbeth
, Guy's wife attempts to cover for him by telling the women that firemen are allowed to bring books home
occasionally to show their families how silly books are. Guy reads from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"; the last
two stanzas are quoted, and the last one is particularly apt, since it shows two lovers looking at what appears to be a
happy world, but recognizing the essential emptiness that exists:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! For the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land
of dreams
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here, as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused
alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Guy's world, too, rests on happiness, a happiness of psychological comfort and freedom from controversy, but Guy
is finding that beneath the exterior is a vast emptiness, a "darkling plain."
Thus far, we have seen how Bradbury has used several allusions to literature to describe the situation of the
contemporary world of the novel. It might be wise at this point to note an historical reference made, one that serves
to underscore some basic ideas in the book.
Early in the book, when Guy is first beginning to undergo doubts, he and his squad are called to the home of a
woman discovered owning books. The woman
refuses to leave her home, choosing to die in the flames with her
books. On the way back to the firehouse, Guy, shaken by the experience, mentions to Beatty the last words of the
woman, "Master Ridley." Beatty— and note again that he has the knowledge—tells Guy that the woman was
referring to Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London in the sixteenth century, who was arrested as a heretic because he
allowed dissenters to speak freely. He was burned at the stake with fellow heretic Hugh Latimer, who spoke the
words to Ridley that the woman in the novel alludes to as her last words: "We shall this day light such a candle, by
God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." These words recall the Phoenix idea of rebirth by fire,
since the woman's death proves to be an important factor in Guy's decision to investigate books.
The words are
ironic in the sense that the intellectual candle in Montag's world is burning rather dimly at the time, but the words are
at the same time a fine statement of the indestructibility of questioners and thinkers in any society.
There are four specific Biblical allusions in the novel, and an examination of them shows that they both support the
idea of the natural cycle and contribute to Bradbury's solution to helping us out of, or rather avoiding, the type of
world pictured by the literary allusions. This solution would be the natural philosophical outlook that would be held
by those who believe in a natural cycle to life and are in the midst of the bottom of a cycle: one must wait and have
faith, since things will eventually improve.
Two of the Biblical allusions that support the idea of a philosophical faith in the renewal of cycles are the references
to the Lilies of the Field (Matthew 6:28) and to the book of Job. Saint Matthew's parable of the Lilies illustrates that
God takes care of all things and we need not worry; the Lilies don't work or worry, yet God provides for them. This
submission
to faith, this feeling that God will provide all in due course is also affirmed by the reference to the Book
of Job, one of the strongest statements of faith in the face of adversity in Western culture. Both of these references
come at significant points in the novel. The allusion to the Lilies of the Field comes as Guy is on his way to see
Professor Faber. The Lilies are juxtaposed in zeugma-like style with Denham's Dentifrice, an advertisement Guy
sees on the subway train. Both flash through his head and form an excellent contrast: the faith and submission of the
Lilies and the artificiality and concern with facades of the contemporary advertisement jingle. After his clandestine
meeting with Faber, at which the professor agrees to help Guy learn about books and plan for the future, Guy gets a
message from Faber through the small earplug he wears to keep in contact with the teacher. The message simply
says, "The Book of Job," in a sense reminding Guy that he must have faith, for the going will be rough on his new
venture.
Two other Biblical allusions come at the end of the novel, when Guy has joined Granger and his colleagues. This
group of men memorizes great works of our culture as a means of preserving ideas until literature is once again
permitted. Guy is assigned to read and memorize the Book
of Ecclesiastes, the Old Testament book that asserts the
need to submit to the natural order of things. The only direct quotation from Ecclesiastes comes from Chapter Three,
the well-known chapter that echoes the natural cycle idea in its opening line, "To everything there is a season…" The
line comes to Guy as the men trudge along in Canterbury-like procession away from the destroyed city, each man
being required to recite aloud from his assigned work in order to bolster their spirit and comradeship. Guy thinks
first of some phrases from Ecclesiastes, appropriately enough, "A time to break down, and a time to build up," and
"A time to keep silence and a time to speak." Another quote then comes to Guy, this one from the Book of
Revelations, which Guy had told Granger he partially remembered:
And on either side of the river was there a tree of life which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every
month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of nations (22:2).
This last book
of the New Testament, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse, tells us that a victory of God is
certain, but that much struggle must come first; we must have faith and endure before we can enjoy the fruits of
victory. The lines Bradbury has Guy recall not only reinforce the idea of a cyclical world, but also give us a key to
Bradbury's hope that "the healing of nations" can best come about through a rebirth of man's intellect. We must use
our minds to halt the endless cycles of destruction by warfare and rebirth to a world of uneasy peace and intellectual
death. The twelve tribes of Israel wandering in the desert seeking a new nation can be recalled here as Montag,
Granger, and the others wander away from the city with hope that their new world will soon be established.
Citation Information
Sisarios, Peter. "A Study of the Allusions in Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451
."
English Journal
59, no. 2, (February
1970). Quoted as "A Study of the Allusions in Bradbury's
Fahrenheit 451
" in Bloom, Harold, ed.
Fahrenheit 451
,
Bloom's Guides. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007.
Bloom's Literature
. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 28 Aug.
2015.
.