Fahrenheit 451 Light Essay

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In his novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses light and dark to reveal that the lack of knowledge can result in deep unhappiness and unfulfillment in life. Bradbury uses the motif of light to symbolize knowledge in the society’s dystopian setting. After a long day at work as a fireman, Guy Montag starts walking his usual path home. As he is walking, he runs into his new neighbor, Clarisse, with whom he has a brief conversation about his job and general things about her and her family. All of a sudden, she mentions she isn’t scared of him as a fireman and, “Her face, turned to him now, was a fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. It was not the hysterical light of electricity, but – what? But the strangely comfortable and rare and gently …show more content…

Her presence sparks Montag’s desire for a deeper knowledge, associating light with the warmth and comfort of knowledge. After uncovering his dissatisfaction with the way his life has turned out, Montag gets wrapped up in his thoughts about how quickly the world shifted into the new and colorless form that it once was. Pulling the drapes closed in his room, he looks across to his neighbors lawn, heading here as Clarisse and her family are laughing and chatting. He thinks to himself that “Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in anyway, coming from the house that was so brightly lit late at night while all other houses were kept to themselves in darkness” (Bradbury 14). Clarisse’s house is described as brightly lit because her family values knowledge, curiosity, and asking questions others are afraid to ask. The warmth and brightness of it symbolizes the exchange of ideas and genuine human connections. This bluntly contrasts the rest of the community, which is intellectually and emotionally isolated, hence why all the other houses are

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