Guy Montag is a fireman who burns people's houses when they are reported to authorities for owning books. When he turns away from that life to preserve books, he gets caught by his boss, Captain Beatty. Not only that, but his wife Mildred reports her own husband and Beatty forces Montag to burn his own house down as part of his punishment. While Montag is burning his house down, Captain Beatty spouts off condescending verbal attacks at him. He quotes Shakespeare and continues to provoke Montag by calling him a snob. With incinerator in hand, and Beatty smugly looking on and provoking him verbally, Montag turns the flames on his boss and incinerates Captain Beatty. The way Bradbury describes the scene is incredible:
"And then he was a shrieking blaze, a jumping, sprawling, gibbering mannikin, no longer human or known, all writhing flame on the lawn as Montag shot one continuous pulse of liquid fire on him. There was a hiss like a great mouthful of spittle banging a red-hot stove, a bubbling and frothing as if salt had been poured over a monstrous black snail to cause a terrible liquefaction and a boiling over of yellow foam. . . Beatty flopped over and over and over, and at last twisted in on himself like a charred wax doll and lay silent" (119).
Bradbury employs similes, along with visual and auditory images, to describe the horrific scene of Beatty's body igniting instantly. There are black, red and yellow colors coupled with action verbs to create images with sound. Then, the descriptions of the reactionary movements of the body are chilling as it chemically changes in moments.
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