Examples Of Phoenix In Fahrenheit 451

“Fahrenheit 451” is a book that Ray Bradbury wrote in 1951, set in a dystopian US sometime during the 21. century. The book talks about Guy Montag, a fireman starting to second guess the governmental ideologies and societal roles. The narrative is set to explore the themes of censorship. The book includes a lot of fire-related motifs because one of the key elements is the widespread and normalized book burning. One of the main symbols is a phoenix, which is present on the firemen’s uniforms. At the conclusion of the book, Granger, a man who has distanced himself from society compares humanity to a phoenix.
The phoenix symbol on the firemen’s uniforms is ironic but helps to establish societal control. The phoenix disc does not get mentioned

During the thought process, where Granger compares humanity to a Phoenix, he implies that individuals are too insignificant to have an impact as a reason why he will not intervene with the natural human cycle of a Phoenix like rebirth. “We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.” (pg 165) He puts a lot of emphasis on how some of the individuals will remember and that number increases every generation, but no one is taking action, because it is simply not yet the right time to do so. He knows that a grand movement like the repopularisation of books, will take millions of people and therefore he chooses to invest energy into saving as much of the literary history as possible. He also emphasizes the insignificance of individuals, when he is talking about his grandfather. “ He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death.” (pg 158). Granger is counciling Montag on dealing with grief, by sharing his personal experience. He states that his grandfather was just an individual and therefore did not have a major impact. Contrarily, he says that the man was also important, but he means to imply that his pecularity was necessary for Granger to find his worldview and just be a person in favor of books. He supports that thought by saying that he hasn’t gotten over his death. The insignificance of individuals in the rebirth also gives a new perspective for the entire book. Usually the protagonist’s personal arcs are very important for a literary piece. In Fahrenheit 451 Montag’s experience was necessary to mainly illustrate the importance of selfawareness in a dystopian society. Him finding his way in life however did not have a phenomenal impact on the course of the rejuvenation of literature. Therefore humanity burning itself and rising from the ashes requires collective effort and no individual is special enough to intervene in the process parallel to a