The Importance of Symbols

The Importance of Symbols

Symbols can represent many things. For example, pink ribbons are associated with breast cancer. Black cats are associated with Halloween, witches, and bad luck. These and many other symbols are used everyday. In the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, symbols are very important. Bradbury uses blood, fire and the phoenix to symbolize passion,change and mankind’s resilience.

Blood is used to symbolize passion. “ The bloodstream in this woman was new and it seemed to have done a new thing to her. Her cheeks were very pink and her lips were very fresh and full of color and they looked soft and relaxed. someone else’s blood was there” (Bradbury 14). The different blood in Mildred make her change. When we first meet Mildred, she was pale, cold; dead. After the blood replacement, she gets stimulated and her body reactions demonstrate it. As a symbol, blood can represent a passion for life and existence.

Change is represented by fire. “That small motion, the white and red color, a strange fire because it meant a different thing to him”(139). This time Montag saw fire in a different way. This time “[fire] was not burning, it was warming”(139). The new image of fire changed Montag. Before that moment, fire had negative connotation. After that moment, Montag saw things as positive and society could have improved. Fire has negative and positive traits that can be nurturing to society.

Finally, Phoenix represents mankind’s resilience. …”every few hundred years [the phoenix] built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have 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”(156). Mankind is just like the Phoenix because when it seems that there is nothing left, mankind renews itself with checks and balances. This “checks and balances” are society’s way of correcting past, present and future errors. There is only one thing that differs mankind’s resilience from the phoenix, “We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation”(156). We will always know the things that we did wrong in the past. That’s what creates our history. Like the Phoenix, mankind finds renewal in society by making changes in survival and advancements like the Phoenix, a resilient symbol.

In Fahrenheit 451 the symbols of blood, fire and Phoenix are basically tools for creating a society that was lost. The author has used symbols, dialogue and forms of destruction to show how society can control its future. Ray Bradbury is basically telling us that this could really happen in today’s world.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451.

Cited: Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451.