An Essay on the Contrast of the Literary Themes, Styles, and Tones Present in Ray Bradbury’s Novels Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury was a writer of incredibly varied genres. His ability to write in such a diverse way was not limited to just genre; he was also incredibly varied in his themes, styles, and tones. He used this skill to construct fantastic worlds and tales on almost any subject matter under the sun. Possibly his most famous works would be Fahrenheit 451, a story about censorship in a dystopian future. On the complete other end of the spectrum is Dandelion Wine, which is a coming of age story set in 1928. Naturally these two stories will be very different. A dissection of the themes, styles, and tones found within Dandelion Wine and Fahrenheit 451 …show more content…
Fahrenheit 451's style features a heavy use of oxymorons and literary references to send its message to the reader (Sisario). One example of this is Bradbury's introduction of The Mechanical Hound, "The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse" (Bradbury). On the other hand, Dandelion Wine's style uses much more intuitive and simple to understand language in order to fit more closely with the kind of language someone around the age of the protagonist would use (Reid).
Finally, the tones Bradbury expresses in Fahrenheit 451 and Dandelion Wine are as different as night and day. In Dandelion Wine Ray Bradbury constructs a tone that conveys both life and the reality of death (Reid). Dissimilarly, the tone present in Fahrenheit 451 is much more complex and mature. Fahrenheit 451's tone manages to communicate the idea of life being meaningless. Eller captured this idea in his book Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction, "But as Montag realizes in the climactic moment of the novel, Beatty wants to die"