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https://doi.org/10.29013/ESR-20-3.4-58-63
Staryna Daria, Bachelor of Philology Support Representative "Audacity International Limited"
E-mail: dashaa720@gmail.com
EXAMPLES AND ANALYSIS OF METAPHORS IN RAY BRADBURY'S 'FAHRENHEIT 451'
Abctract. The article is a study of metaphor as a means of conveying a hidden author's message, establishing a connection between the selected images and the content. The author analyzes the use of metaphors in Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' on specific examples, establishes the existing pattern and organizes the systematization according to the content direction. It is noted that the focus of the metaphors is often not nouns but verbs. This can be distinguished as a characteristic feature of the author's idiostyle.
Keywords: metaphor, concept, image, design, epithet, comparison.
The relevance of the problem under the re- content, the poetics of the works of the writer. The
search. Metaphor is a popular literary tool that allows the author to discover the depth of his own message and to explain the complexity and multilayered images created by him to the reader. The proportioning of the metaphors in the text and the expediency of their use are important. The metaphorical application is one of the possibilities to create a clearer idea of the future, as it is usually associated with semantic shifts, which leads to an additional expressive richness of the text as a whole. This is the background of the relevance of the chosen topic. The reader's perception of the work of art depends on the metaphors. Ray Bradbury is one of the literary figures for whom metaphor plays an important instrumental role. Its use is justified and relevant in the novel 'Fahrenheit 451'. The uniqueness of the content of a novel full of meaningful metaphors arouses the interest of literary critics and philologists.
Analysis of recent research and publications. Researchers such as S. Berezhnyy, Ya. Zasurskyy, O. Leonov, G. Prashkevich, V. Skurlatov and others have conducted the study of the writing of Ray Bradbury. Scientists have expressed many appropriate opinions about the specifics of ideological
novel 'Fahrenheit 451' attracted the particular attention of the researchers. G. Brandis, Yu. Kagar-litskyy, E. Kovtun, N. Paltsev, L. Sych, V. Skurlatov, B. Storokah and others have devoted their studies to the conceptual analysis of the content and formal features of this work.
The purpose of the study is to analyze the use of metaphors in Ray Bradbury's novel 'Fahrenheit 451', giving specific examples.
Presenting main material. In connection with the putting forward the anthropocentric scientific paradigm, the concepts of the inner world of man are the focus of modern linguistics [2]. According to comparative linguistics, for all Indo - European languages, as well as for a number of others, a characteristic means of linguistic representation of the human inner world is a metaphor [4]. Avoiding too broad understanding of the metaphor in which it refers to any use of words in a figural sense [3, P. 296], we nevertheless refer to metaphor, that is, to metaphorical epithet and metaphorical comparison. Studies of metaphors of the inner world in works of fiction reveal the peculiarities of individual-author's understanding of national concepts of this field.
The metaphor, on the one hand, interprets a thing through other things, that is, facilitates the separation, reflection of one meaning over another, and on the other hand, it actualizes the meaning of the thing itself. Therefore, in the metaphor, there is separation, and against the background of this separation, there is an artistic perception of the world through the meaning of things, through the meaning of the aesthetic sensations caused by a thing, and through the meaning of another thing. This is how the thing itself is actualized. In this sense, metaphor is at the same time an artistic verbal trope and a way of perception and understanding things. This is the ontology of the metaphorical space of a work of art [6, P. 2].
The metaphor is divided into traditional and creative (individual). Ray Bradbury uses an individual metaphor, based on the unexpected comparison of two things that, at first glance, do not show any similarity traits. The metaphorical nature of the novel is explained by the possibility to create a brighter idea of the future.
The work with samples offiction, a special analysis of which will help to evaluate their artistic value, expressiveness at not an intuitive level, but based on conscious perception of expressive means of language, is particularly important for researchers.
Ray Bradbury's novel - utopia 'Fahrenheit 451' [6] describes the life of a totalitarian society that has come under the influence of mass culture. Books that make one think about the meaning oflife and are capable ofhelping one escape from this artificial world are forbidden and have to be burnt. This is what so -called 'firemen' do. One of them is the main character of the novel - Guy Montag.
Despite the fact that the line of spiritual reincarnation and becoming a hero is the basis of the work, the author does not pay attention to the characteristic details of the appearance of Montag. However, the image of the hero is fully revealed in the team of firefighters, who are very similar to him. The impeccably woven metaphorical image of the firefighter instantly captivates the reader with the first pages of
the novel - "It was a pleasure to burn. It was a pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history" [6, P. 6].
It is not accidentally, that the author compares his hero with the bandmaster. He is the central figure of the story, and the opportunity to change the course of life is in his hands, but Montag plays his symphony with a huge python, throws kerosene at the wreckage of story in the form of books. Burning books, he with his throbbing head, like all firefighters of his time, enjoys the process of absorption of them by the fire.
As it seems from the first pages of the novel, at first he does not think about the correctness ofwhat is happening around and his own actions. He is encouraged to this by his acquaintance with an unusual girl, Clarisse McClellan; then the attempted suicide ofhis wife, the self-immolation of a woman whose library was destroyed by 'firefighters', and communication with a former professor of English, a secret book collector, Faber, complete the case started by Clarisse.
Trying to understand what makes Clarisse so different from the people around him, Montag resorts to the metaphor: "... how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you? People were more often - he searched for a simile, found one in his work -torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?" [6, P. 35].
Clarisse's extraordinary capacity for empathy is what sets her apart from other citizens, because most of them are indifferent. In a society where thoughtful people who are not prone to hours of primitive fun are considered abnormal, Clarisse is forced to visit a psychiatrist. She tells Montag about her communication with him: "I'm a regular onion! I keep him busy peeling away the layers" [6, P. 44]. The metaphor of 'multilayer'
speaks ofthe various personality traits that are hidden under one another and are suddenly revealed.
Montag's external well - being is only a mask: "He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back" [6, P. 36]. Montag's inner speech contains a metaphor related to the wish of change in the soul of his wife: "If only they could have taken her mind along to the dry-cleaner's and emptied the pockets and steamed and cleansed it and re-blocked it and brought it back in the morning" [6, P. 39].
The novel is full of symbols. Fire is the strongest symbol of the novel. Fire in the hands of a firefighter, which means destruction (unlike the usual conception of firefighters extinguishing a fire, preserving rather than destroying) is fatal. It destroys books, the last pillars of creative thought, because paintings in museums have long been replaced by interactive and abstract.
In the words of Beatty, the firefighter, the author compares the book's blazing pages to a swarm of black butterflies. However, in this situation, butterflies do not flutter, but die, having lost their freedom, which can be compared to deprivation of freedom of speech through the destruction of books.
The contradiction ofMontag's condition when he is ready to read the forbidden poems to his wife and her guests is conveyed by two antonymic metaphors: "The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness" [6, P. 107]. The tension of the listeners is fire as well, but they are also 'explosive': "... the women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode" [6, P. 104].
The term 'book' gets its broader sense in the next paragraph: "This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more "literary"you are" [6, P. 83]. In this passage, the book is almost a living being with its inherent properties -
it breathes, it has a face, it has different sides of life. Thanks to these definitions, which are in fact the definitions of the lexical unit 'book', its terminologi-zation is taking place. Here the meaning of the term 'book' is somewhat (though not very clearly) different from its meaning in the previous example.
Thus, both terminology units 'fire' and 'book' have very common meanings, or even several different, but related, meanings. They have a large information load. This fact does not completely congruent with the conventional thought that the term should only be monosemantic.
The author's attitude to the terms 'fire' and 'book' is significant. Here are some examples "With his brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world" [6, P. 3]. There are two metaphorical comparisons in external and functional terms in the sentence: fire - poisonous kerosene and fire hose - a huge python. Moreover, here is another example of the writer's attitude to the book - "A book lit, almost obediently like a white pigeon, in his hands, wings fluttering" [6, P. 37].
In both examples, the author uses a metaphorical comparison of objects, that is, in these cases the terminologization of the meanings of common words occurs by metaphorizing based on formal and functional features [2]. Here words acquire a certain degree of terminologization, having received certain emotional-expressive definitions.
The motive of fire is also closely related to the candle symbol, which also cannot be interpreted monosemantically. Firstly, the candle, as a natural light source, is contrasted with the artificial light of electric lights of advertisements and television walls. Secondly, the flame of the candle is associated in the mind of the hero with the fire of love, even his strange girlfriend Clarisse, Montag associates with the candle. Finally, the candle flame symbolizes the hero's faith and loyalty to his principles.
Bradbury uses the metaphors all fire, all coldness in order to show the contradiction of the state of the hero, who feels like thrown into the heat, then into
the cold. The response of the listeners is immediate - "The women who were burning with tension. Any moment they might hiss a long sputtering hiss and explode" [6, P. 104]. Women are burning from tension so much that they literally become explosive. At the same time, speaking of the prospect of his communication with Faber, Montag likens himself to fire, and wise Faber - to water: "He would be Montag-plus-Faber, fire plus water" [6, P. 110].
In general, mental processes in the novel are often associated with flames, combustion, burning. Even the perception of the poetic line is described in the following way: "In all the rush and fervour, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel" [6, P. 57].
During the study, the concepts underlying the metaphors used by the author were identified. Thus, among the language metaphors we see one of the most important concepts - 'People - things', which involves the perception ofhuman through the lens of artificial objects: "The girl? She was a time bomb" We can find the same concept in a number of artistic metaphors: "Well, after all, this is the age of the disposable tissue. Blow your nose on a person, wad them, flush them away, reach for another, blow, wad, flush. Everyone using everyone else's coattails" [6]. Similar logic is also observed in the concept 'People - natural objects' (people are perceived through objects of the environment). For example, a language metaphor "He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over" [6]. Same concept is observed in a number of artistic metaphors: "We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam' [6].
Along with these important concepts, we should also mention the concept 'Movement - life'. This concept is quite often manifested as 'No movement -death'. For example, a language metaphor "Why waste your final hours racing about your cage denying you're a squirrel?" [6] in this text shows the inevitability of death, if not moving forward. Here we see the author's metaphor "Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip!" [6].
'Technique in the Novel' is a technique designed to destroy books. This technique is described as a bloodthirsty animal: "It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed" [6, P. 1]. In this case, the fire from Montag's flamethrower destroying books symbolizes the destruction not of the book itself, but as stated earlier, of the product of human creativity.
Associating technique with a beast of prey also demonstrates its danger to humans: "With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history" [6, P. 1].
The metaphorical association of a large fire hose with a python creates an association with the bane-fulness of the equipment. When Montag finds his wife trying to commit suicide, he imagines the idea of technique as an attachment to something untrue: "His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable" [6, P. 5].
Life in an anti - utopian city, where technique has prevailed, is the most clearly characterized by a fragment that describes the feelings of Montag returning home from the city: "It was like a great bee come home from some field where the honey is full of poison wild-ness, of insanity and nightmare, its body crammed with that over-rich nectar and now it was sleeping the evil out of itself' [6, P. 11]. Montag, in this text snippet, is compared to a bee, a small creature that works for the benefit of society, and a city full of technique, outdoor advertising, screens that people have stopped paying attention to - all this is honey, and therefore all of this is what people live on in the city. However, this honey turns out to be poisonous and full of horrors, and therefore, in this case, an association of 'technique - fear' is created.
In order to understand the peculiarities of R. Bradbury's understanding of the binary
opposition 'Human - technique', it is also necessary to trace cases of their direct interaction, for example: "One of them slid down into your stomach like a black cobra down an echoing well looking for all the old water and the old time gathered there. It drank up the green matter that flowed to the top in a slow boil" [6, P. 6]. Here again, the metaphor 'technique - a beast of prey' is used, which means that the technique penetrates into a person as if a cobra crawls on a tree.
Thus, a person in such a system begins to take a passive place, and the leading and active role during this time is given to technique: "The woman on the bed was no more than a hard stratum of marble they had reached" [6, P. 6]. Eventually, a person stiffens and ceases to be a human.
The metaphorical representation of the binary opposition 'human - technique' in R. Bradbury's novel 'Fahrenheit 451' is traced to what associations each of the members of the represented binary opposition creates in the author's mind. The very idea of the novel, its plot is pervaded with this opposition, because the novel describes a society that destroyed feelings by favoring logical thinking and technical support.
In Bradbury's vision, human is a living, active, thinking being, filled with feelings and desires. This is what attracts the attention of the main character to a young girl Clarisse, who is completely different from the others: "He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know that refracted your own light to you?" [6, P. 4].
By contrast, with technique, people are inherently irrational. Their feelings and desires create contradictions, forcing them to experience certain emotional states, such as: "The room was blazing hot, he was all fire, he was all coldness; they sat in the middle of an empty desert with three chairs and him standing, swaying, and him waiting for Mrs. Phelps to stop straightening her dress hem and Mrs. Bowles to take her fingers away from her hair' [6, P. 47].
Another key characteristic of human in R. Bradbury's novel is its curiosity: "One time, when he was a
child, in a power-failure, his mother had found and lit a last candle and there had been a brief hour of rediscovery, of such illumination that space lost its vast dimensions and drew comfortably around them, and they, mother and son, alone, transformed, hoping that the power might not come on again too soon<...>" [6, P. 3].
Products of creativity, including books, are inextricably linked to human: "Afountain of books sprang down upon Montag as he climbed shuddering up the sheer stair-well" [6, P. 17]. The book itself, as a manifestation of the creative nature of human is given almost the properties of a living being in the novel, it is one of the characters of the work. Therefore, book - related metaphors are often associated with dynamic phenomena of nature, like water moving in a fountain.
The image of the centrifuge, which rejects the 'unnecessary thoughts', characterizes the consciousness of human from the 'entertainment society' in general: "Whirl man's mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters, that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!" [6, P. 72]. Finally, for the last time, the metaphor of the centrifuge appears in Faber's speech: "Patience, Montag. [...] Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge" [6, P. 97].
How precisely and in detail the writer is able to image - a human, a grain of sand, worthless in this mad rhythm of life, thrown out of the rock and whirling in a centrifuge, falling into a waterfall of emptiness. It should be said that this example is a cascade of metaphors that is quite common in Bradbury's works (man whirled in a centrifuge; waterfall that fell into emptiness). The impact of deafening music on the mind of the character is also likened to the actions of household appliances. "... you had the impression that someone had turned on a washing - machine or sucked you up in a gigantic vacuum. You drowned in music and pure cacophony" [6, P. 63].
Consciousness is likened to a rock that is hammered and makes dust: "Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull
died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then... the startled dust had settled down about Montagus mind..." [6, P. 114].
Finally, consciousness can shake as if from natural disasters: "The earthquake was still shaking and falling and shivering inside him..." [6, P. 121].
Author metaphors that combine several concepts at same time or do not have any that can be clearly distinguished, have also been identified. "He thought of the visit from the two zinc-oxide-faced men with the cigarettes in their straight-lined mouths and the electronic-eyed snake winding down into the layer upon layer of night and stone and stagnant spring water' [6]. In this example, we can clearly distinguish the concept of 'Human - system', and then we see the description of the human body through natural phenomena and objects (night, stone, stagnant spring water).
Conclusions. So, considering Ray Bradbury's most popular work, 'Fahrenheit 451,' in the context of using metaphor to expand the content of the novel and actualize the main problems, we found out that the writer focuses not on consciousness as a whole, but on what is happening in the process. This defines the characteristic feature of the author's idiostyle -focusing metaphors not on nouns but verbs. Metaphorical expressions are important not only in terms of imagery, but also as indicators of the conceptual system of human. Based on these expressions, we can not only discover the logic behind the construction of metaphors, but also trace how a person comprehends the information coming from the outside world, through which value and general cultural systems of objects of reality and people themselves are perceived by us.
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