“Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!” And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering…Now as the vacuum-underground rushed him through the dead cellars of town, jolting him, he remembered the terrible logic of that sieve, and he looked down and saw that he was carrying the Bible open. There were people in the suction train but he held the book in his hands and the silly thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. But he read and the worlds fell through.” (page 91).
“The Sieve and the Sand”
The sieve and the sand represents the fact that even with some type of reward (the promise of knowledge or the dime) that the people in the society in this book, have an inability to understand and critically think about information, just as a sieve is unable to hold sand. It relates to the major theme because in Farenheit 451 is the disintegration of peoples attention spans.
“It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed” (3).
“And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later; nothing to rot later” (115)
“Fire’s real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it” (page 109).
“One time, when he was a child, in a powerfailure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination…hoping that the power might not come on too soon” (page 6).
“It was not burning; it was warming! He saw many hands held to its warmth, hands without arms, hidden in darkness” (page 144)
Fire
FIre as destroyer of knowledge and responsibility: This symbolizes that fire can make life and time disappear in seconds. With the way it quickly destroys books, it can also destroy memories and knowledge in seconds, turning them into dust.
Symbol of warmth and community: After escaping the city, Montag sees a group of men by a fire and realizes that fire can provide warmth and comfort, not just destruction. This scene marks his first understanding that fire has a dual nature.
Symbol of illumination and comfort: Montag recalls a time when his mother lit a candle during a power outage. This memory represents a brief period of warmth, comfort, and rediscovery that was a source of positive illumination in his life.
“He wore his happiness like a mask, and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask, and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back” (12).
“Her face was like a snow-covered island” (13).
“They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless” (83).
Faces
This symbolizes that happiness is temporary. Happiness does not last forever and people can take your happiness, just like the girl took his ¨mask¨ meaning she took his happiness. There would be no point in him chasing it back because it won’t last forever anyway.
“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” (3).
“Old Montag wanted to fly near the Sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why” (113).
“There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years, he built a pyre and burnt 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” (163).
Birds/Wings
It represents burning and rising back up and that the city was burned down and then it rised up with the group of society that kept books.
“With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head” (3).
“One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra…Did it suck out all of the poisons accumulated with the years?”(14).
“To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason. The salamander devours his tail!”(86).
Reptiles
It symbolises that the world has been poisoned, the symbol is a snake mostly seeing as they are widely known for how many are poisonous.
Poisoned in a sense of conforming to society, and becoming sickened with thoughts, and witnessing the world around them.
“Come on now, we’re going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look at them.” (179)
Mirrors
People in this society need to self reflect and be aware like how Montag did. See how this society is corrupting them and stripping their humanity.
“The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse.” (21)
Mechanical Hound
The mechanical hound represents the society Montag lives in like how most people are alive but just existing. Montag is scared of the hound because he can see himself in it and he doesn’t want to self-reflect.
“Hold Still!” She peered under his chin and frowned. “Well?” he sadi. “What a shame.” she said. “You’re not in love with anyone.”
“It doesn’t show.”
“I am, very much in love!” He tried to conjure up a face to fit the words, but there was no face. (20)
Dandelion
The dandelion represented the fact that Montag was no longer, possibly for a long time, in love. It was one of the many things Clarisse showed to Montag to make him realize how messed up his world was, showing that he knows so little about on a deep level that he doesn’t love her. The dandelion seemed like a childish superstition but ended up having a profound effect on the main character.
They had this machine. [It] slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there… Did it suck out all of poisons accumulated with the years? It fed in silence with an occasional sound of inner suffocation and blind searching… The entire operation was not unlike the digging of a trench in one’s yard.
One-eyed Snake
Montag felt as if the snake replaced his wife because of the way it took all of the liquid out of Mildred’s body and replaced them with a synthetic material instead. Montag feels as though the snake has poisoned his wife instead of helping her.
