Images and Symbols in Fahrenheit 451Imagine a future in which all books are banned and censored in an effort to prevent the human race from thinking for itself. Such a lifestyle is described in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. This scary world is one in which people are controlled by the government in every way possible. A number of restrictions are imposed on members of this society. One of them is the ban on owning and/or reading literature. Firefighters in this era are paid not to protect citizens from the danger of fire, but to burn all the books to ashes. A fireman, named Montag, is (open to the paths of life) in which people read, think and live freely. Bradbury uses poetic devices throughout the novel to paint vivid images. Two of these poetic IMAGES are the use of fire and water WHICH represent different meanings. Bradbury references the fire and its purpose several times. For firefighters, fire symbolizes purification through the burning of books. This is ironic since such an act generally denotes destruction. Captain Beatty, chief of the fire department, believes that "fire is bright and fire is clean."(60) This belief develops when he explains to Montag the reasoning behind burning books . The reader is then given a picture of Beatty, his character and his way of thinking. In one case, the flames were used to cleanse the firefighters of their ills by eliminating the chief. In this case, "Montag fired a continuous pulse of liquid fire at [Beatty]" until "he was a screaming inferno, a leaping, tentacled gibberish mannequin, no longer human or known, all of flames writhing on the lawn. » (119) An image is created in the reader's mind of how Montag finally stands up for what he believes to be right. Additionally, when Montag sets his own house on fire, he has an unusual emotional experience in which he views the fire as a new starting point. The fire means that Montag sterilizes his life by burning his house and “he felt himself burst into the fire, torn, torn, torn in two with the flame and put aside the senseless problem. » (116) This captures Montag in a stage of anger and frustration after his wife leaves him and his boss is ready to arrest him..