Fahrenheit 451 question #7

The author Ray Bradbury uses several techniques in his book "Fahrenheit 451" in order to engage the audience and make the story more effective. A few techniques he uses are suspense, betrayal, and irony.. Like I said, one of the techniques Bradbury uses is suspense. This is used in a couple different events in the book. The first usage of this would definitely be when Guy Montag walks into his room and finds the empty sleeping tablet bottle. His wife Mildred, is depressed and becoming suicidal. The bottle was full of thirty pills when Montag had left and he comes home with it being completely empty. First it was suspenseful finding his wife unconscious in their bed and then even more suspenseful when they are pumping her stomach trying to save her life. Another technique used is betrayal. This has to do with Mildred as well. The books were too much to handle and she turned in her own husband. After the firemen show up, she completely walks out of Guy's life and probably did not think twice about it. "The front door opened; Mildred came down the steps, running, one suitcase held with a dreamlike clenching rigidity in her fist, as a beetle-taxi hissed to the curb" (Bradbury, 114). One last technique Ray Bradbury uses in "Fahrenheit 451" to engage the audience and make the story more effective is irony. The specific type of irony he uses is situational irony which is when the outcome of a situation is the opposite of what you were expecting to happen. An example of this being used was when the car was coming after Guy Montag. I thought for sure that he was going to be run over but it turns out the car just barely missed him. Another example of situational irony is at the very end of the book when the bomb goes off in the city. In my head, I thought the book was just going to end with Guy Montag living with the other guys in the woods and was not expecting the entire city to be destroyed just like that. All of these techniques definitely added interest to the book and made it more enjoyable to read.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Del Rey Book, 1991. Print.