Burning Bright the heading derives from “The Tyger,” a poem by William Blake.
Icarus the son of Daedalus; escaping from Crete by flying with wings made of Daedalus, Icarus flies so high that the sun’s heat melts the wax by which his wings are fastened, and he falls to his death in the sea. Beatty alludes to Icarus with the comment: “Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why.”
You think you can walk on water Beatty alludes to Jesus walking on water, as recorded in Mark 6:45–51.
There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am arm’d so strong in honesty that they pass by me as an idle wind, which I respect not Beattytaunts Montag with a passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene iii, Line 66.
there’s lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks Faber refers to the educated people who have dropped out of sight to live the hobo life outside the city.
Keystone Comedy from 1914 to 1920, director Mack Sennett and Keystone Studios produced a series of madcap silent film comedies featuring the Keystone Cops.
the guild of the asbestos-weaver Montag associates his desire to stop the burning with the formation of a new trade union. Like the guilds of the Middle Ages, the asbestos-weavers symbolize progress against the tyranny of the past.
coat of a thousand colors Granger alludes to Joseph, the character in Genesis 37:3–4 who receives a long-sleeved, ornamental coat of many colors from Jacob, his doting father. The coat, symbolizing favoritism shown by Jacob toward his son, alienates the other sons, who sell their brother to passing traders, stain the coat with goat’s blood, and return it to their father to prove that a wild animal has eaten Joseph.
crying in the wilderness Granger compares his group’s minority status to John the Baptist, the prophet whom Isaiah predicted would one day announce the coming of the Messiah (Isaiah 40: 3–5).
V-2 rocket the German’s use of the first long-range, liquid-fuel missile carrying a ton of explosives during World War II changed the face of modern warfare.
atom-bomb mushroom on August 6, 1945, over Hiroshima, Japan, American pilots dropped the first atomic bomb used in the war. The explosion, which rose in a straight column two hundred miles high, ballooned outward like a huge mushroom.
I hate a Roman named Status Quo! Granger’s grandfather made a pun out of the Latin phrase, which means the situation as it now exists.
whisper of a scythe an extended metaphor begins with a giant hand sowing the grains of bombs over the land. The image concludes with the death-dealing scythe, the symbol carried in the hand of Father Time, an image of death, which cuts down life in a single, silent sweep.
To everything there is a season Montag recalls an often-quoted segment of Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, which reminds him that there is a time for dying as well as a time for living.
And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations a prophecy from verse two of Revelation 22, the last book in the Bible.
