Storyneeds...everybody needs a story
Find stories to improve your life & work
  • HOME
  • About
  • Introducing
    • Mussolini's Gran Sasso Rescue
    • The War is Over Please Come Out
    • The Heroic Impostor
    • Hack Heaven
    • The Hitler Diaries
    • Lincoln's Dream
    • Modigliani's Heads
    • Giorgio Perlasca
    • Rider on the Storm
    • Mountain Hero
    • Resusci Anne and L'Inconnue
    • The Bucket Rider
    • Cupid and Psyche
    • Pygmalion and Galatea
    • Arachne
    • Charlemagne and the Ring
    • Theseus and the Minotaur
    • Ramses III by Herodotus
    • The Ronald Opus Case
    • Operation Mincemeat
    • Agent Zig Zag
    • The Elephant and the Blind Men
    • The Little Hunchback
    • The D-Day Crosswords
    • Burke and Hare
    • France Investigates Airport Gaffe
    • Orange County Woman Swims to the Soviet Union
    • the Christmas Truce
    • The Man Who Lost His Path
    • Shattered Glass
    • Correcting The Record
    • Jimmy's World
    • Pearls Before Breakfast
    • Rider on the Storm
    • Zimbardo Stanford Experiment
  • Picture Blog

A Fireman's Conscience

7/30/2014

0 Comments

 
A Fireman's Conscience


The opening lines to FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury are manic and magical. Montag, the protagonist is a fireman with a difference. He doesn't put out fires, he burns books; 451 Fahrenheit being the temperature at which book paper burns. And he not only burns books, he gets a kick out of it.

Bradbury employs similes and metaphors to give us insight into Montag's disturbed mind. Montag's delusions of grandeur make him appear as "...some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies...". The hose he wields becomes a "...great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world...". The burning debris flying around him becomes "...a swarm of fireflies..." through which he strides.

But Montag's beginning to question what he does and why he does it. He's someone who, in the fury of a hungry fire, notices how "...flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house.". Someone who's developing a conscience. Someone who needs to be careful.

"It was a pleasure to burn it. 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. Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt-corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that. smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered."



Alberico Collina
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Categories

    All
    A Different Dictionary
    Animals
    Art
    Creativity
    Crime
    Fables
    Faith
    Love
    Myths
    Nasrudin
    News-based
    Others-55-word-stories
    Others-short-stories
    Poetry
    Quotations
    Reviews
    Scribblings
    Speeches
    Supernatural
    War
    Writing-advice

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    August 2022
    February 2022
    June 2020
    March 2020
    May 2019
    February 2019
    September 2018
    September 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    November 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    July 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.