Ray Bradbury's Use Of Allusions In Fahrenheit 451

Often times when one reads a book, one would want to feel a connection to the piece of literature, to the story, and to the characters themselves. He or she does this by searching for things in the story that has a familiarity to the reader in order for them to relate and understand the message of the novel. This, then, is what authors and writers use as a guideline in writing their stories. They reference other pieces of literature that are either well-known or where readers can be familiar with. In the other terms: allusion. An allusion is a reference to a quote from another composition that is used to arouse ideas in a reader’s mind without directly telling literal information in the story. In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury uses allusions to …show more content…
First and foremost, allusion can be a good rhetorical device that can provide a solid argument. Ray Bradbury uses allusions to expound and justify a belief and a point of view of a certain character or theme. “And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manners of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Bradbury 158). This quote is from the Book of Revelations chapter 22 verse 2 in the Bible. It was God’s message that there will be a real day where the world would end. Just like how the city in the book that once stood was destroyed in the end. But there is also the “tree of life” that signifies the belief in the afterlife--that there is a future where there is only peace and healing for nations after a war. This is just like what the Book People are trying to accomplish: to rebuild their society. Another example is the phoenix of God burning itself in flames until it turned it into ashes, and then one day appear differently: beautiful and anew (Bradbury 162). This alludes from the Book of Ecclesiastes