The color green plays an interesting role in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a science fiction novel about a futuristic dystopian society in which books are burned because of the knowledge they contain. Much has been made about the use of the color white in this and in other novels, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. White is associated with purity and innocence, so it is often used to convey or emphasize those character traits in literature. Such is the case with Bradbury’s story, in which two of the more virtuous characters, Clarisse and Faber, are associated with the color white. Green, however, is a little trickier. It is used to represent both good and evil. The Mechanical Hound, for instance, has “eyes all green flame,” and its appearance is foreshadowed by “a faint drift of greenish luminescent smoke.” Yet, green is also associated in Fahrenheit 451 with nature—hardly a novel idea, but one put to good effect in the scenario depicted in Bradbury’s novel. In the section of the novel when Montag recalls his first encounter with the former professor Faber, the color green is an integral component of his memory:
“Hold on. He shut his eyes. Yes, of course. Again he found himself thinking of the green park a year ago. The thought had been with him many times recently, but now he remembered how it was that day in the city park when he had seen that old man in the black suit hide something, quickly in his coat . ... The old man leapt up as if to run. And Montag said, "Wait ! " "I haven't done anything! " cried the old man trembling. "No one said you did." They had sat in the green soft light without saying a word for a moment, and then Montag talked about the weather, and then the old man responded with a pale voice. It was a strange quiet meeting. The old man admitted to being a retired English professor who had been thrown out upon the world forty years ago when the last liberal arts college shut for lack of students and patronage.”
Montag associates in his mind the color green with his meeting Faber for the first time because the encounter occurred in a park, with green grass and trees. The logical association of green with nature is no accident, and Bradbury returns to that theme later, when Montag meets Granger and the other defectors from this dystopian society who have committed themselves to memorizing the contents of books. Describing the manner with which each of these individuals has dedicated himself to memorizing books so that the knowledge they contained can be reapplied in whatever new society replaces the one being destroyed by war, Granger states that “[s]ome of us live in small towns. Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine.” Granger’s point is that each of these individuals has not only memorized the contents of the books, but has immersed himself psychologically into the essence of the books, and few authors personified man’s relationship to his surroundings as eloquently as Henry David Thoreau. It is, similarly, Granger who expresses the hope for a post-war world in which nature can once again be permitted to blossom, noting how his grandfather had hoped that, in the aftermath of World War II, “that some day our cities would open up and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big.”
Montag associates the color green with his initial encounter with Faber because that encounter occurred in a green park, and because green represents the hope for a better future—one in which technology is contained and nature is not.
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