Allegory In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

Allegories are used for many reasons, such as debating about politics, or create moral meanings, but what intrigues me is that authors are able to express their ideas on controversies going on in the world with their stories, at the same time, it give a better context to the story, and give a peek of how it would feel if the reader was in the situation, just with an allegory. Kate Chopin, most assumedly, was a supporter of the feminist movement, and she showed her support of the women’s movement through her allegories, for example her short story “The Story of an Hour.” "Story of an Hour” starts out with Richard, Brently Mallard’s friend, came home with terrible news that Louise Mallard’s husband, Brently Mallard died in a train accident.

Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, had a really strong allegory with Plato’s allegory of the cave. At the beginning of the story, the main character Guy Montag, encounters an odd girl, who doesn’t fit in with society. Montag feels as if this girl, Clarisse, has made an influence on him, and gave him an insight, to reality, not this “fake world” they live in. Montag reflects about Clarisse “But Clarisse's favourite subject wasn't herself. It was everyone else, and me. She was the first person in a good many years I've really liked. She was the first person I can remember who looked straight at me as if I counted.(Bradbury,33)" In the allegory of the cave, the people who were passing by, outside the cave, were casting weird shadows, and then when the chains of a prisoner broke, he was enlightened with what it was that caused the shadows. Clarisse is like the chains breaking off of Montag or the prisoner, kept in the shadow. The allegory of the cave helps the reader understand that Clarisse was the enlightenment for Guy Montag. Throughout the entire story, Montag, and all of the other citizens were under the image that books were a bad thing, and firefighter had to light them up. Captain Beatty explains “...here was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That's you, Montag, and that's me.(Bradbury 28)" In “The Allegory of the Cave,” the prisoners were forced to see the shadow of objects, and had to live based off of that, and they even had to argue their view, and what they saw. In “Fahrenheit 451”, Captain Beatty casts a shadow of what life should be lived like, but Montag is in disagreement, and feels as if life should be lived