International Journal of Engineering and Advanced Technology (ijeat) issn: 2249 – 8958, Volume-8 Issue-5C, May 2019 India

International Conference on Recents Advancements in Engineering and Technology (ICRAET-18) |15th and 16th 
March 2019|Siddhartha Institute of Technology & Sciences, Telangana, India. 
1151 
Published By: 
Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering 
& Sciences Publication
Retrieval Number:E11600585C19/2019©BEIESP
DOI: 10.35940/ijeat.E1160.0585C19
"It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see 
things eaten, to see things blackened and changes. With the 
brass nozzle in his fists, with great python spitting its 
venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his 
head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conduct 
or playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring 
down the tatters of and charcoal ruins of history. With his 
symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his head, and his eyes all 
orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked 
the igniter and the house jumped up in gorging fire that burned 
the evening sky and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of 
fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a 
marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping 
pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the 
house, while the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew 
away on a wind turned dark with burning. Montag grinned the 
fierce grin of all men signed and driven back by flame" [3:3]
These earliest lines of the narrative serve as an epilogue to 
what follows in that sterile world where the mass material 
culture predominates at the expense of knowledge. What is 
characteristic about the onset is the style. The setting is 
symbolic; the style is descriptive. The language of the onset 
swings between metaphor and metonymy as the diction is 
mostly derived from the treasury of reality (e.g. brass nozzle, 
kerosene the igniter, marshmallow, etc.). The onset, 
moreover, is not without metonymic tokens like with his 
symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his solid head, or a simile 
as in He wanted above all, like an old joke, to shove a 
marshmallow on a stick in the furnace. All these metaphorical 
modes of expression where the selection of diction witnesses 
a sort of meaning transfer stand as an analogy to the dystopian 
State in real. It is the function of language to build up the 
mental picture of the world. What is significant to point out is 
that power, in its Foucault’s sense is exercised by an identity 
who executes the ideology of the authoritative class. For 
Foucault, as has already been stated, power is not a 
supernatural phenomenon; it is omnipresent in everyday life. 
For Foucault power is everywhere, and power relations are 
embedded in social life. To carry out the ideology of the 
ruling class, Motag, the fireman, performs the act of burning 
books. He is pushed to do that while he finds some pleasure in 
that unfair act, where "his hands were the hands of some 
amazing conductor plying all the symphonies of blazing and 
burning to bring down the tatters of and charcoal ruins of 
history". The metal power, i.e. ideology, is implemented by 
the physical power, i.e. fire for burning. But is burning books 
in unnamed city is viewed as an individual act, what about the 
attitude of the community where the knowledge doomsday 
takes place and where the flapping pigeon-winged books died 
on the porch and lawn of the house? To highlight the image of 
society in the novel, and since power is a degree of influence 
exercised in human communities by institutions on 
individuals. Accordingly, the society in Bradbury’s 
Fahrenheit 451 is wholly intoxicated and reshaped by the 
ideology of the political class. While the State totally 
prohibits the act of reading books, the State, as one 
institutions and as individuals, encourages the proliferation of 
mass consumable culture. People in the city is wholly 
preoccupied with enjoying nature, spending time by 
themselves, having trivial conversational turns, watch 
excessive degree of television on wall-size sets and listen to 
the radio on Seashell Racio. This political strategy leads to the 
spreading of ignorance and triviality among the communal 
individuals and in the texture of the society as an adapted 
human structure. For exposing the representations of the 
sector (s) of society under the influence of the political 
ideology, it well to comprehend the semantic organization of 
the narrative text in quest. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is 
fundamentally based on the notion of Binarism or binary 
oppositions :ignorance vs. knowledge. It is the contrast 
between the mass consumable culture which is backed by the 
political ideology or strategy and Intellectualism which is 
backed by intellectual group or Books Lovers. In that 
Panoramic vision, symbolism plays an influential role or 
function transmitting the message of the narrative text. Of 
these symbolic signs are the city, the books, fire, blood, the 
phoenix, and the Salamander. If semiotics is the theory of 
signification and the way in which meaning is constructed by 
sign use, this meaning is encoded in a symbolic manner. 
Therefore, to unravel the meaning(s) in Bradbury’s 
Fahrenheit 451, it is of interest to interpret the symbols of the 
narrative text. The events of Fahrenheit 451 take place in a 
city. Strangely, this city is unnamed; it is the location where 
knowledge is decreased, while ignorance is decreased. This 
anonymous setting may give the hint that this city is 
everywhere and nowhere: thought it cannot be spotted on the 
geographical map, but it exists where the unfair human 
situation exists, where man become a thing due to the 
oppressive ideology of the State. This city is populated by 
humans who are actively idealized in a way to make them stop 
questioning the world around them. It is place where the 
human mind is totally paralyzed because of the order of the 
State. In all human cultures the books represent knowledge. 
They stand for the enlightened visage of humanity. Books 
symbolize knowledge and knowledge is a mental power: it is 
the knowledgeable anti-power to the ignorant power imposed 
by the authoritative political institution. So, the planned 
schema of stopping reading books by the individuals of the 
society, prohibiting them and then burning those serves to 
stop the human mind to question the political ideology in 
which the people live by. Here comes the significance of fire 
as a symbolic token. Fire, the next symbol, is of dyadic sense. 
In the general sense, the fire is the fourth element of creation 
in the Greek philosophy. The human progression couldn’t be 
in history without the invention of fire. Fire, however, is 
manipulated to represent mass destruction against knowledge.
In this context, the scene of burning performed by Montag, 
the fireman, is symbolically descriptive; it is constructed in a 
metaphorical or connotative style: "With the brass nozzle in 
his fists, with great python spitting its venomous kerosene 
upon the world". Let us consider the selection of the noun 
python and the epithet venomous to highlight the monstrous 
process of burning knowledge. Fire also operates in an 
opposite way. While the fire is destroyer, it can function as 
creator and reformer too. When Montag flees to the jungle, he 
meets a group of humanitarian intellectuals around the fire.

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