In the cases of many people, eyes say more than mouths do. They express to others what the people themselves are incapable of, more often than not without their realization or permission. It is not rare to find an author write that someone’s “eyes told a different story.” In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury recurringly mentions eyes in a way to tell his story more in depth, in ways that the characters are not always aware of. The story takes place in a dystopian society where knowledge and books were written off as dangerous long ago, and not many people still remember, or have the capacity to learn, what it was like to think independently and question the world around them. Because so many of these characters are blinded by the false
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She is almost immediately labeled as someone who sees the truth, with her “clear dark eyes” that startle and intrigue the protagonist, Montag, upon first meeting her (14). Clarisse was mindful of others’ blindness long before Montag was, but she never had to straight out tell him that she was-- her character was understood through her subtle words and through the repeated emphasis on the eyes that “were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them”, always observing and always absorbing information to be retained (5). In contrast to Clarisse’s youthful, clear and fresh presence in the book, however, is the old man that Montag reunites later on with, Faber. Faber has been alive and a part of this irrational society much longer than Clarisse, and therefore he’s seen, experienced a lot more. His childlike curiosity is sometimes still evident, when he is presented with a book for the first time in years and “he [does] not look so old any more and not quite as fragile”. Other times he is used to show how long he has been walking around hopelessly in a blind world, where “his eyes had faded,” almost as if his efforts too are dwindling day after day (38). The eyes of both these characters reveals their role in the story, as those who see beyond what is in front of
She is almost immediately labeled as someone who sees the truth, with her “clear dark eyes” that startle and intrigue the protagonist, Montag, upon first meeting her (14). Clarisse was mindful of others’ blindness long before Montag was, but she never had to straight out tell him that she was-- her character was understood through her subtle words and through the repeated emphasis on the eyes that “were so fixed to the world that no move escaped them”, always observing and always absorbing information to be retained (5). In contrast to Clarisse’s youthful, clear and fresh presence in the book, however, is the old man that Montag reunites later on with, Faber. Faber has been alive and a part of this irrational society much longer than Clarisse, and therefore he’s seen, experienced a lot more. His childlike curiosity is sometimes still evident, when he is presented with a book for the first time in years and “he [does] not look so old any more and not quite as fragile”. Other times he is used to show how long he has been walking around hopelessly in a blind world, where “his eyes had faded,” almost as if his efforts too are dwindling day after day (38). The eyes of both these characters reveals their role in the story, as those who see beyond what is in front of