Fahrenheit 451 Symbol Analysis

In the vast genre of literature, most authors use symbols in their stories or poems to efficiently give them more meaning and complexity. Usually, the job of the experienced reader is to interpret those symbols, which gives the reader a deeper comprehension of the story or poem. In Fahrenheit 451, three symbols used by Ray Bradbury and will be analyzed is the Sieve and the Sand, the Phoenix, and the River.
In the second part of the book (Bradbury page 74), Montag has a flashback of when he tried to fill a sieve with sand, but the sand seemed to vanish through the sieve. The sand and the sieve is symbolic of Montag’s general struggle to maintain and keep the information that books offer, where the information from the books vanishes in Montag’s
The Phoenix symbolizes the current society in Fahrenheit 451, and also symbolizes the potential rebirth of the society. When Granger explains what the Phoenix is to Montag and compares it to society (after the city gets bombed), he says, “There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, but we’ve got one thing that the Phoenix never had. We know the silly damn thing we just did.” (Bradbury 156) The society condones burning books and literature, and the city ends up getting bombed and destroyed, just like how the Phoenix builds a pyre and burns himself up. A difference between the Phoenix and the society is that society knows the chaos it’s creating, and it’s foreshadowed that one day the city and society will rebuild itself, like how the Phoenix rose from the