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Irony
Definition of Metaphor
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor can be stated explicitly, as... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other. The comparison in a metaphor... read full definition
A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two different things by saying that one thing is the other... read full definition
Part 1
Explanation and Analysis—Symphonies of Burning:
At the beginning of Part 1, Guy enjoys burning down a house. The scene is described vividly through imagery, metaphor, and personification:
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.
Multiple literary devices here allow the reader to understand how it can be a "pleasure to burn." Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, there is the imagery of fire, things "blackened and changed," and "eaten," as if the fire is hungry. The hose which pumps out kerosene is personified into a "great python" that also seems to enjoy the burning. Finally, a metaphor compares Guy's hands to the hands of a conductor and the fire to a symphony. Burning has come to seem to him like the creation of art, even though it is destruction. It also seems to give him a moment of pleasurable control; like a conductor, he is directing and enjoying all the fiery change.
Explanation and Analysis—Candlelight:
When Guy first meets Clarisse in Part 1, her kindness and interest in conversation confuse him. In a stream of consciousness moment, he describes her face with metaphorical language and imagery, and finally has a flashback that reminds him of Clarisse.
He saw himself in her eyes, suspended in two shining drops of bright water, himself dark and tiny, in fine detail, the lines about his mouth, everything there, as if her eyes were two miraculous bits of violet amber that might capture and hold him intact. Her face, turned to him now, was 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 flattering light of the candle. One time, as a child, in a power failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon. . . .
Guy looks at Clarisse, trying to understand what is special about her. Bradbury often uses a stream of consciousness style to help the reader imagine Guy's train of thought, and this moment is no different. Guy describes Clarisse's face and demeanor increasingly impressionistically and abstractly, then finally slips into a flashback that ends with an ellipsis.
First, her face is described with imagery. Her eyes metaphorically are "two shining drops of bright water" that reflect an image of Guy back to himself, then they are "violet amber." Amber captures bugs and suspends them, just as Guy feels somehow captured and understood by Clarisse. Her face is first metaphorically "fragile milk crystal," then has the "light of a candle." It is this candlelight metaphor that sends Guy into his flashback about his mother. Unlike other literal and metaphorical fire in the novel, candles do not indicate destruction. Here, Guy's fond memory of candlelight, and his preference for it over "hysterical" electric light, could be read as connected to a larger distrust of mass media and other new technologies in the novel.
Explanation and Analysis—Melting Smile:
In Part 1, after Guy has spoken to Clarisse, his increasing disillusionment is described with metaphors and similes:
He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. 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.
Both metaphor and simile are used to describe Guy's smile, which itself seems to stand in for Guy's happiness. First, his smile is a burnt-out candle with its wax spilling everywhere. Candles are a complex part of the fire symbolism; unlike most literal and metaphorical fire in Fahrenheit 451, candles are generally positive, comforting metaphors or similes, attached to happy memories or good people. In this light, Guy's metaphorical candle going out suggests some inner peace has been disrupted. A simile compares Guy's missing smile to a stolen mask: there's no way to get it back, and readers know it's Clarisse's fault.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Ocean of Sound:
In Part 1, Mildred lays on the bed listening to what we would now call earbuds. Bradbury describes her (and her obsession with mass media) with metaphorical language and imagery:
His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.
A simile asserts that Mildred is "like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb." This is deathly imagery, appropriate for Mildred's still body, but she's not even the corpse—she's simply a representation of a body, a carving of one. Her unmoving eyes are metaphorically "fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel," which is another inorganic image that suggests her senses are not attuned to the real world.
Metaphor and imagery also describe the work of the earbuds: "An electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk […] [comes] in on the shore of her unsleeping mind." This extended marine metaphor, appropriate for a device called Seashells, makes the noise of Mildred's earpieces into an ocean. The endlessly noisy ocean crashes into Mildred's mind, which is as solid and simply receptive as a seashore. There is no give and take between her mind and what she hears, only uncritical listening. The ocean metaphor further illustrates this point: the large, impersonal movement of the sonic ocean bears her away.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The McClellan Family:
The McClellan family, and especially Clarisse, serve as a foil for Guy, his family, and his coworkers. Since the novel is mainly written from Guy's point of view, the way Clarisse's family is described indicates what Guy finds unusual about them, and therefore what the norm is for "normal" citizens of this dystopia. For instance, in Part 1, the McClellans are described like this:
Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly. Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in darkness. Montag heard the voices talking, talking, talking, giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web.
Guy's shock at Clarisse's habits indicate to the reader how different this world is from ours. Note in this passage what is mentioned about Clarisse and her family (and therefore what Guy finds remarkable about them). Their laughter is "not forced," which suggests Guy hears lots of forced laughter in the families he's used to. Their house is still lit as they have an involved conversation with each other, an activity Guy finds odd. Their talking is a metaphorical "hypnotic web." The metaphor suggests that Guy wants to join this appealing world, but also finds it dangerous and fears getting trapped within it. Guy is interested in words specifically: eventually he'll seek out books, but right now, it is this passionate talking which interests and frightens him.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Closed Eyes:
In Part 1, a disturbed Guy sits in the firehouse while his coworkers play cards. His impressions of the event are relayed in a stream of consciousness style that mimics his half-awake state, and the imagery and metaphor make his experience and doubts vivid even though he is simply sitting still with his eyes closed.
The flutter of cards, motion of hands, of eyelids, the drone of the time-voice in the firehouse ceiling “. . . one thirty-five, Thursday morning, November 4th, . . . one thirty-six . . . one thirty-seven A.M. . . .” The tick of the playing cards on the greasy table top, all the sounds came to Montag, behind his closed eyes, behind the barrier he had momentarily erected. He could feel the firehouse full of glitter and shine and silence, of brass colors, the colors of coins, of gold, of silver. The unseen men across the table were sighing on their cards, waiting. “. . . one forty-five. . . .” The voice clock mourned out the cold hour of a cold morning of a still colder year.
In this stream-of-consciousness moment, Bradbury uses ellipses, lists, and sonic imagery to illustrate Guy's headspace as he thinks. It's not that Guy is thinking of anything, or generating any ideas; instead, the stream of consciousness style is used to show that Guy takes in the impressions around him, feels time moving by slowly, thinks of the firehouse, and doesn't necessarily feel comfortable there.
A metaphor compares Guy's closed eyes to a "barrier he had momentarily erected." Guy tries and fails to find a way to block out the career and society he suddenly finds distasteful—by closing his eyes. Nevertheless, he still imagines the firehouse that surrounds him. Interestingly, Bradbury uses visual imagery to describe the firehouse even though Guy's eyes are closed!
Explanation and Analysis—Unlocked Doors:
In Part 1, the firemen's destruction of the woman's house is described with metaphorical language and characterized by situational irony.
Next thing they were up in musty blackness swinging silver hatchets at doors that were, after all, unlocked, tumbling through like boys all rollick and shout. “Hey!” A fountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stairwell. How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle.
This passage is a great example of Bradbury's writing style, which is full of literary devices and especially metaphorical language. For instance, a simile compares the firemen to boys playing, tumbling, and shouting, which indicates to the reader that the firemen find this fun. Just as was true for Guy at the beginning of the book, the firemen take pleasure in the destruction and burning. A metaphor describes the mass of books as a fountain, as if the flood of knowledge is overwhelming or attacking Guy. This difficulty causes Guy to reflect that "always before it had been like snuffing out a candle," another simile that further complicates the fire symbolism in the novel. It would be easy to assert that fire is, or symbolizes, a bad thing in Fahrenheit 451, but this is not true for all literal or metaphorical mentions of flames. Pay special attention to the metaphorical mention of candles, as well as fire's cleansing or rebirthing potential.
The situational irony comes from the unnecessary violence the firemen use out of habit, or because they enjoy it. They hack down doors "that were, after all, unlocked."
Explanation and Analysis—A Book Is a Gun:
Throughout the novel, Beatty voices many arguments against books. Bradbury uses him as a mouthpiece for censorship so that readers can better understand how a dystopia like this might form, and what supposed benefits its strict censorship is meant to have. In Part 1, for instance, Beatty uses metaphors and similes to argue that books are a malign influence.
Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally ‘bright,’ did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn’t it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man’s mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I won’t stomach them for a minute.
Beatty is a persuasive talker, and for someone who hates books, he's quite well-read and even employs many literary devices in his speech. In a simile, he compares the other boys in the classroom to "so many leaden idols," unmoving, unthinking, and jealous of the smartest boy in the class. A well-read man is metaphorically a "mountain" that others must cower under. And finally, Beatty uses a cinching metaphor that shows the ideology that has led to the firemen: "A book is a loaded gun." A book is a weapon, a tool, something the enemy cannot have, and something which must be controlled or disposed of.
Beatty uses this metaphor and the others to persuade Guy, but it also has the purpose of exposing to the reader how Beatty conceptualizes books. While characters like Faber and Granger characterize books as living, fruitful things that bring people together and improve humanity, Beatty only sees what books can do to give one individual a leg up on all the others. He thinks of literature in purely utilitarian and competitive terms, a mindset well articulated by the gun metaphor.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
One recurring motif in Fahrenheit 451 compares books to birds through similes and metaphors, personification, and imagery. For instance, early in Part 1, Guy conceptualizes of the books he's burning as pigeons:
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.
The personification here means that the books are not simply destroyed. Instead, they "died," which is a more emotionally loaded word choice. The "pigeon-winged" metaphor makes the books sound like gentle animals, inherently innocent and undeserving of their death. These devices provoke sympathy for the books and anger over their burning.
A similar moment occurs later in Part 1, when Guy and the other firefighters burn the unnamed woman's house:
A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. […] The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.
A simile compares a book to a "white pigeon," which personifies the book into a gentle and obedient animal. The magazines are like "slaughtered birds" and are personified into having "bodies." Again, the similes, personification, and imagery here make the reader feel pain for the books' plight.
The books-as-birds motif recurs in Part 3, as Guy burns down his own house:
The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.
A simile compares the books to birds once more, but this time it seems the birds are being roasted alive, given that they are dancing as they die. The books metaphorically have wings, and the fire becomes their feathers. This lively language provides the reader with visual imagery of the books' destruction.
Related Themes:
Part 2
Explanation and Analysis—Sand in a Sieve:
In Part 2, Bradbury uses the metaphor of the sand and the sieve to explain Guy's futile-seeming hope that he can read and retain the entirety of the Bible:
Once as a child he had sat upon a yellow dune by the sea in the middle of the blue and hot summer day, trying to fill a sieve with sand, because some cruel cousin had said, “Fill this sieve and you’ll get a dime!” And the faster he poured, the faster it sifted through with a hot whispering. His hands were tired, the sand was boiling, the sieve was empty. Seated there in the midst of July, without a sound, he felt the tears move down his cheeks. 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.
This metaphor is also a flashback, and it contains vivid imagery of the hot beach and young Guy's despair. Guy himself makes the flashback into a metaphor for his attempt to understand and appreciate literature when books are not meant to exist. He has very little time and safety, so much to read, and no guarantee it'll stick in his mind. Guy is of two minds in this moment. He believes reading the Bible will be futile, and yet he's tempted to try it anyway, to see if "some of the sand will stay in the sieve."
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—This Book Has Pores:
Fahrenheit 451 contains many philosophical discussions of art, and especially literature. In Part 2, Faber uses metaphoric language and imagery to describe to Guy how he sees books:
Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are.
A book about books offers an interesting opportunity: it allows readers to see why the author writes the way he or she does! This moment could be analyzed from Bradbury's point of view as the author. If readers assume Faber's viewpoint represents Bradbury's, then what does Bradbury appreciate about a book? What qualities does he want his own literature to have?
Obviously a book does not have literal pores, but Faber uses this metaphor to indicate that, to him, a valuable quality of art and especially literature is its detail, complexity, and interpretive potential. The metaphorical image of examining a book "under a microscope" shows how much Faber loves literature and how rewarding he finds its study. Both the "pores" metaphor and the microscope metaphor are biological; books in this framework are alive and therefore can change, grow, and reproduce themselves.
Explanation and Analysis—Guilty Hands:
In Part 2, Guy's guilty conscience over stealing and keeping books is described through the personification of his hands:
In Beatty’s sight, Montag felt the guilt of his hands. His fingers were like ferrets that had done some evil and now never rested, always stirred and picked and hid in pockets, moving from under Beatty’s alcohol-flame stare. If Beatty so much as breathed on them, Montag felt that his hands might wither, turn over on their sides, and never be shocked to life again; they would be buried the rest of his life in his coat sleeves, forgotten.
This moment is another great example of how Bradbury weaves together literary devices and imagery to create sharp impressions and emotions that the reader feels alongside Guy. This passage personifies Guy's hands into autonomous actors, animal-like and guilty. His hands seem to hide from Beatty in pockets. A simile compares Guy's fingers to ferrets, which are squirmy rodents that hide from predators. Beatty has a metaphorical "alcohol-flame stare," fittingly enough. Beatty's breath might metaphorically kill Guy's hands. In other words, Beatty's attention (his stare, his breath) could reduce Guy to inaction, metaphorized into the death of Guy's hands.
The personification of Guy's hands also serves to separate him from his own actions. His hands cannot act without him; he made the choice to pick up and hide the books. But in this moment of high anxiety, perhaps Guy regrets his choices, blames his hands for the guilt he feels, and seeks to distance himself from his own fingers.
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Explanation and Analysis—A Welter of Words:
In Part 2, during a conversation with Guy, Beatty personifies and metaphorizes books.
What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives.
The novel's narrator and many of the novel's good characters, such as Faber, use literary devices to characterize books as fragile, innocent, and beneficial influences on the world. Beatty does the opposite; he personifies books into duplicitous beings that will betray their readers. He metaphorically compares books first to a moor (a hilly, grassy British habitat), then a welter. The moor comparison suggests a book reader can easily get lost in all the contradictory ideas books present. A "welter" is a big mess of items, and the welter metaphor likewise suggests confusion, as if a reader might not know where to go in the mess of words that makes up a book.
Bradbury allows Beatty time to explain his ideology, which humanizes him. Through the character of Beatty, Bradbury also exposes readers to the counterarguments against books, reading, and knowledge. Although it may seem obvious to modern readers that book burning is bad, organizations and individuals have argued for, and successfully enforced, censorship of all kinds throughout history. One of the arguments in support of censorship does, in fact, suggest that some material will needlessly confuse and mislead readers.
The rest of Fahrenheit 451 allows readers to see the flaws in Beatty's argument, including that he seems to only want books to act as proof for his already-established ideas. His criticism here is that books contain contradicting ideas and can be cited by anyone. Of course, characters like Faber and Granger (and probably Bradbury himself) would assert that it is a blessing, and not a curse, that books can contain any content, since this allows the reader to survey the reasoning behind contradictory views and come to his own conclusion.
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Part 3
Explanation and Analysis—Earthquake:
In Part 3, after Guy is done burning down his own house, his reflection on his predicament contains metaphors and imagery.
A great earthquake had come with fire and leveled the house and Mildred was under there somewhere and his entire life under there and he could not move. The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him and he stood there, his knees half bent under the great load of tiredness and bewilderment and outrage, letting Beatty hit him without raising a hand.
Guy realizes his life has changed forever: he has no home, no wife, and no career now. The metaphor that compares these calamities to an earthquake shows that Guy's life is moving unpredictably and dangerously, and everything he once valued is suddenly gone, just as would be true after a literal earthquake. Nor is the awfulness over, as Guy knows: the earthquake is "still shaking and falling and shivering," movement-based imagery which not only describes his unstable psychological state but also the danger and uncertainty he faces now that his wife has turned him in.
A few more metaphors illustrate his current mindset quickly and vividly. First, his emotions are metaphorically a "load" that weighs him down and paralyzes him. Second, Beatty's words and actions are like being struck; the villain has "hit him without raising a hand" by toying with him, making him burn down his own house, and then arresting him.
Explanation and Analysis—Birds:
One recurring motif in Fahrenheit 451 compares books to birds through similes and metaphors, personification, and imagery. For instance, early in Part 1, Guy conceptualizes of the books he's burning as pigeons:
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.
The personification here means that the books are not simply destroyed. Instead, they "died," which is a more emotionally loaded word choice. The "pigeon-winged" metaphor makes the books sound like gentle animals, inherently innocent and undeserving of their death. These devices provoke sympathy for the books and anger over their burning.
A similar moment occurs later in Part 1, when Guy and the other firefighters burn the unnamed woman's house:
A book lit, almost obediently, like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering. In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. […] The men above were hurling shovelfuls of magazines into the dusty air. They fell like slaughtered birds and the woman stood below, like a small girl, among the bodies.
A simile compares a book to a "white pigeon," which personifies the book into a gentle and obedient animal. The magazines are like "slaughtered birds" and are personified into having "bodies." Again, the similes, personification, and imagery here make the reader feel pain for the books' plight.
The books-as-birds motif recurs in Part 3, as Guy burns down his own house:
The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow feathers.
A simile compares the books to birds once more, but this time it seems the birds are being roasted alive, given that they are dancing as they die. The books metaphorically have wings, and the fire becomes their feathers. This lively language provides the reader with visual imagery of the books' destruction.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Burned Alive:
In Part 3, when Guy sets fire to Beatty in order to escape, the climactic death scene is described with similes and evocative imagery:
And then [Beatty] was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling gibbering manikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. Montag shut his eyes, shouted, shouted, and fought to get his hands at his ears to clamp and to cut away the sound. Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent.
This scene is full of descriptive, violent imagery that allows readers to imagine Beatty's horrible death. The pain of being burnt alive reduces Beatty to a metaphorical "gibbering manikin." To describe the sound, Bradbury uses a simile: Beatty's flesh makes a "hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove." The simile for the sight is equally gross: Beatty looks like a snail that's had salt poured over it. Finally, Beatty is "like a charred wax doll," a simile that drives home for the reader what death by burning alive has done to this once-strong villain.
The more details Bradbury adds here, the more horrified, fascinated, and invested the reader can be in the spectacle of Beatty's death. These devices heighten the drama of the scene and even provoke sympathy for Beatty.
Explanation and Analysis—Scent:
In Part 3, Guy finds out another Mechanical Hound is now tracking him; Bradbury uses imagery, metaphor, and simile to describe Guy's subsequent panic:
Montag felt his nostrils dilate and he knew that he was trying to track himself and his nose was suddenly good enough to sense the path he had made in the air of the room and the sweat of his hand hung from the doorknob, invisible but as numerous as the jewels of a small chandelier, he was everywhere, in and on and about everything, he was a luminous cloud, a ghost that made breathing once more impossible.
It seems unlikely Guy can literally smell himself. However, his realization of the danger he is in, and his plan to escape it by hiding his scent, is made much sharper by this metaphorical moment where he imagines he can smell what the Mechanical Hound will. A simile compares his sweat to the "jewels of a small chandelier," an image that helps the reader visualize the microscopic evidence Guy hopes to cover up. Guy is metaphorically "everywhere, in and on and about everything," which descriptively shows the difficulty of erasing scent humans themselves cannot smell. Additional metaphors compare Guy to a "luminous cloud" and a "ghost." These devices show his justified paranoia about his scent, and they also illustrate for the reader how Guy thinks about his predicament and logics out a way to solve it.
Finally, note the rambling, long sentence. It's technically a run-on sentence, but Bradbury's purpose in flaunting grammatical convention is to mirror, with the rhythm of the hurried sentence, the panic Guy feels.
Explanation and Analysis—The Phoenix:
In Part 3, Granger alludes to the ancient, cross-cultural myth of the Phoenix.
There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned 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. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we’ll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.
His purpose in telling Guy this story is to illustrate a point: human civilization is cyclical, and even though humans often work against their own best interests (as is the case with the book burning), they can recover from the destruction they've wrought like the Phoenix rising from the ashes. In this case, then, the myth works as a metaphor for human behavior. The distinction Granger makes between the Phoenix and humankind is also illustrative, and especially emphasizes the power of books: they allow humans to record and remember "all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years" so that someday, ideally, humanity will stop doing them.
This is a hopeful note to end the book on. Essentially, Granger asserts that this dystopia too shall pass, and is in fact a product of a natural if lamentable pattern of human behavior. It's fitting that he chooses to metaphorize the dystopian society in this fiery myth. The Phoenix allusion recasts the novel's burning and destruction as cleansing. In the myth, fire is necessary for the Phoenix's rebirth, and so perhaps even the horrible events of Fahrenheit 451 will lead to a better society.
