Fahrenheit 451 Writing Style
by Ray Bradbury

One joy of reading Bradbury stems from his exquisite use of metaphor and simile. Consider the following passage describing the Mechanical Hound: "It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wildness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself" (22).

Bradbury also uses quotes from many other authors to emphasize his own ideas. This is a particularly suitable technique given that this work is about literature itself. The most prevalent examples of this are the frequent rain and water images that relate back to the quote by James Boswell (see the "Important Quotes" section).

Comma splices (two independent clauses joined by a comma) are present throughout the work. Presumably, this is a stylistic choice on behalf of the author, and not a recurring error. Bradbury, like all good science fiction writers, explores what possible futures might arise if current disturbing trends from his own time continue. What can be disturbing is how much certain writers, like Bradbury, accurately predict.