Sign for analysis: Fahrenheit 451 In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, in the midst of a tale of book-burning and lost knowledge, a large looming object gains a peculiar amount of mention: the moon. From the very beginning, imagery has been introduced, when Montag “did not wish to open the curtains and open the french windows, for he did not want the moon to come in the room” (Bradbury 10). After observing Clarisse’s family though his window, Montag “moved back to his own house, left the window wide, checked Mildred, tucked the covers about her carefully, and then lay down with the moonlight on his cheek-bones and on the frowning ridges in his brow, with the moonlight distilled in each eye to form a silver cataract there” (Bradbury 15). As …show more content…
The book, while not written during the United State’s race with Russia to go into space, was written during a time when such interest was still forming due to recent advances in space travel capabilities. Such a fascination can be found in Clarisse during her very first conversation with Montag, when she mentions a “man on the moon” (Bradbury 7). The same curiosity can even be spotted in Montag himself, if the comment Clarisse makes about how he looked at the moon whenever she mentioned it (Bradbury 21) is any indication. The interest shown by these characters is not surprising, though, when one knows that Bradbury himself had a deep, invested fascination with space. For Bradbury, space was the big thing and he imagined it as “an expanse to be filled by the imagination” (Seed 122). His writing in the past has consisted of many works of fiction that revolved around space. In fact, Bradbury has even written an entire collections of short stories, specifically Mars, which is known as the Martian Chronicles. With the obvious love of space Bradbury possesses, it would not be surprising to see it surface in his other works, even if that work is not specifically space-centered. So, the appearance of the moon being a significant symbol feels fitting in a