Figurative Language in Fahrenheit 451
One of the most captivating aspects of good literature is the use of figurative language, or ideas
communicated beyond their literal meaning to create an image in the reader’s mind. There are
several types of figurative language, also called figures of speech. For this exercise, you will use
the following figures of speech:



Metaphor: a comparison, based upon similarity or resemblance, of two or more objects.
“The pillow was a cloud.” Metaphors can also be more complex: “His recliner was his
throne and his remote his scepter: with these he ruled his kingdom.”
Simile: a comparison between two unlike objects, using the words “like” or “as” in the
comparison: “The pillow is like a marshmallow.”
Personification: giving human qualities or characteristics to non-human objects: “The
wind sang its sad song.”
Section I Directions: Decide which of the underlined figures of speech are contained in the
excerpt from FH451. Some excerpts contain more than one type of language, so you may circle
more than one choice for each.
1. “The stars poured over his sight like flaming meteors” (145.)
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
2. “Out of the black wall before him, a whisper. A shape. In the shape, two eyes. The night
looking at him. The forest, seeing him” (145).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
3. “A deer. He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed
exhalation of the animal’s breath, all cardamom and moss and ragweed odor in this
huge night where the trees ran at him, pulled away, ran, pulled away, to the pulse of the
heart behind his eyes (146).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
4. “I am Plato’s republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus” (153).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
5. “Perhaps he had expected their faces to burn and glitter with the knowledge they
carried, to glow as lanterns glow, with the light in them” (160).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
6. “Now, a full three seconds, all of the time in history, before the bombs struck, the enemy
ships themselves were gone half around the visible world, like bullets in which a savage
islander might not believe because they were invisible” (160).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
7. “The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turned the men over like
dominoes in a line, blew the water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees
above them mourn with a great wind passing away south” (162).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
8. “The men lay gasping like fish laid out on the grass. They held to the earth as children
hold to familiar things, no matter how cold or dead, no matter what has happened or
will happen, their fingers were clawed into the dirt . . .” (163).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
9. “A shotgun blast went off in his leg every time he put it down” (123).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
10. “The land rushed at him, a tidal wave” (145).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
11. “Come on now we’re going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but
mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them” (166).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
12. “She was beginning to shriek now, sitting there like a wax doll melting in its own heat”
(78).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
13. “There were people on the suction train, but the held the book in his hands and the silly
thought came to him, if you read fast and read all, maybe some of the sand will stay in
the sieve” (80).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
14. “The books leapt and danced like roasted birds, their wings ablaze with red and yellow
feathers” (118).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
15. “So they must have their game out, thought Montag. The circus must go on, even with
war beginning within the hour . . .” (136).
a. Metaphor
b. Simile
c. Personification
Section II Directions: Read each quotation from FH451. Look at the underlined figure of speech
in the sentence then decide what figure of speech is being used. Finally, analyze the
comparison being made, the object being personified or exaggerated, or the image being
created by explaining the meaning of the figure of speech. An example is done below.
Example: “’Each page becomes a black butterfly. Beautiful, eh? Light the third page from the second and
so on, chain smoking, chapter by chapter’ . . . There sat Beatty perspiring gently, the floor littered with
swarms of black moths that had died in a single storm” (79).
Figure of Speech: ______metaphor_______
Analysis: Bradbury compares the burnt pages of the book to a swarm of black moths, as the pages like
there, “dead” from the fire. Moths are white, but would turn black if burned just like paper. This can also
related to the death of freedom. Moths are insects free to fly around, but here they are killed as the books
are burned which kills freedom of thought.
16. “The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great tonload of music made of
tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass” (81).
Figure of Speech: __________________________
Analysis:
17. “The night I kicked the pill bottle in the dark, like kicking a buried mine” (80).
Figure of Speech: ___________________________
Analysis:
18. “And then he came to the parlor where the great idiot monsters lay asleep with their
white thoughts and their snowy dreams” (118-9).
Figure of Speech: ___________________________
Analysis:
19. “He stood and he had only one leg. The other was like a chunk of burnt pine log he was
carrying along as a penance for some obscure sin” (123).
Figure of Speech: ___________________________
Analysis:
20. “Well,” said Beatty, “the crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold. We’re all
sheep who have strayed at times”(108).
Figure of Speech: ___________________________
Analysis: