Symbols In Fahrenheit 451 Quotes

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red 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.

They made a list of a hundred books to test their system. Symbolism not lost on the librarian, nor on the bestselling author, they pulled Fahrenheit 451 first. The Call of the Wild, The Catcher in the Rye, Animal Farm, 1984, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Invisible Man, Beloved, books on Thomas Jefferson, Spartacus, Pancho Villa, Stepan Razin, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., works by Howard Zinn, and a host of other free thought and spiritual books made their list.