"The books have nothing to say." - The Captain

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is such hard novel to fuly comprehend.

Though it's virtually impossible to comprehend fully, there is, in fact, symbolism that is shown through the book that is not hard at all to pick out. For example, blood appears throughout the novel as a symbol of a human being’s repressed soul. Mildred remains unchanged when her poisoned blood is replaced with fresh, mechanically administered blood by the Electric-Eyed Snake machine. The symbol of blood is intimately related to the Snake machine. Bradbury uses the electronic device to reveal Mildred’s corrupted insides and the thick sediment of delusion, misery, and self-hatred within her. The Snake has explored "the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water," but its replacement of her blood could not rejuvenate her soul. Her poisoned blood signifies the empty lifelessness of Mildred and the countless others like her. Considering the loss of sanity among Ray
Bradbury, the symbolism of the blood is no shock.
Another example is at the end of the novel when Granger says they must build a mirror factory to take a long look at themselves; this remark recalls Montag’s description of Clarisse as a mirror in “The Hearth and the Salamander.” Mirrors here are symbols of self-understanding, of seeing oneself clearly.


Overall, Bradbury's insanity - how little or how big - is shown althroughout this novel, and it's no secret. I did enjoy the novel, though. I mainly looked forward to seeing what insane event would happen next as I turned the page.

"Do what you love; love what you do." - Ray Bradbury

Bradbury's interviews were almost too hard to comprehend solo. If I had not read the book first, I would have been clueless. Even having read the book, his interviews almost didn't make sense and somewhat seemed to contradict his writing. In his interviews, it sounds as if he was going crazy in a "nerdy" sense. At the very beginning of his first interview, he stated that he fell in love with cartoons at an early age. He began to learn to read at 3. When he turned 7, he fell in love with animated cartoons. When he was 9, he fell in love with the future. When he was 11, Tarzan was being illustrated, by Harold Foster. I think these young ages put him off as sort of a geek, but he obviously didn't care.

He wanted to write a novel about how basically society was killing peoples' minds. He wanted to show how if things kept going the way that they were, he had an idea of how it would end up in the future. He beleived that television was horrible, and like the devil. He beleived the opposite about books - he looked at them as being sacred almost as GOD. That was a sign of symbolism that I found between Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451. He does a great job in the novel of showing us about his passion for books and passion against television. He does this by telling about Mildred's TVs being "walls" and the actors and actresses being "family members."

I didn't understand his reasoning for the novel before listening to/reading his interviews. For that reason, I don't think he was accurate. He is one of the hardest people/authors to understand because he was so into his literature that it seems he lost his sanity.