Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism is a school of thought derived from the discipline of psychoanalysis. Developed by the famed Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis can be adapted to criticize literacy. Critics using this methodology analyze a literary work as if it were a dream; that is, they will analyze the “latent content,” or true and greater meaning, hidden behind “manifest” or obvious content, such as events, feelings of characters, characters themselves, etc. For a very simplistic example, imagine one would see their best friend who has been away for quite some time in a dream. Chances are that this is indicative of that individual missing their friend. The manifest content is that the individual interacts with their best friend. The latent content, or greater meaning, is that the individual deeply misses the presence of said friend. In psychoanalyzing Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, there are numerous examples of deeper meaning lying beneath every thought and action of the characters (manifest content) to essentially bring out that the desire for knowledge will override one’s sense of citizenship and morality - the fundamentals of one’s character (latent content). A perfect example of such hidden meanings in Fahrenheit 451 is Montag’s hands. Montag commits the crime of stealing a book; the act of even owning a book, let alone stealing it, is strictly forbidden in the society of a futuristic United States - censorship rampant in an effort to appease the offended groups of peoples within it. Montag declares that “his hands had been infected;” his crime was an involuntary bodily reflex. He blames his “ravenous” hands for numerous amounts of crimes within the novel. In terms of Freud’s psychoanalytic criticism, the manifest content is that Montag commits the crime of stealing the book and blaming it upon his hands. The underlying latent content is that Montag’s drive thirst for knowledge and truth over ignorance is overriding his sense of citizenship and obedience to the law; his hands thus become the powerful symbol for his feelings of rebelliousness. Another illustration of concealed meanings comes from the title of the second part of the book - The Sieve and The Sand. As a child, Montag attempts to earn a dime from his malicious cousin by filling a sieve, a device for screening small particles (i.e. strainer), with sand. The small grains of sand continually fall through the sieve, thus rendering young Montag unable to fill it. He realizes the futility of the task and tt frustrates him to the point in which he begins to cry. In the present setting of the book, Montag is attempting to read the Book of Ecclesiastes and commit it to memory. When psychoanalyzed, there is clear meaning that the reading of the book directly correlates to his childhood memory. Like the sand falling through the sieve, the words fall out of his memory the harder he attempts to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes. However, the fundamental meaning of this correlation is that the sand represents truth in tangible form that Montag is seeking to hold on to. His mind represents the sieve, in that it seems impossible to grasp this elusive truth in any permanent way. His desire to grasp the sand despite the metaphorically suggested futility of the task is indicative of the overall greater meaning of the work, the latent content in Freudian terminology. A third demonstration of Bradbury’s burying of meanings is found in the climax of the story. Montag, as a fireman, whose job in the story is to burn the books under censorship law, is confronted by the fire captain, Beatty, who ironically has a vast literacy knowledge base himself. Beatty gives Montag a flamethrower to personally burn the books he had stolen previously. However, Montag turns the flamethrower on him and kills him. There are dual meanings shrouded behind the manifest content of Beatty’s death by fire.
The first is that Beatty is Montag’s societal conflict in tangible human form - the killing of him represents his emancipation from such societal subservience; after all, once he commits murder, there is no going back. The second meaning resides in how Beatty dies. The fire is akin to Montag’s war on compliance, and he achieves his freedom by abusing it and committing a far worse crime than simply taking a book. Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is riddled with veiled meanings behind plot events when analyzed by Freudian methodology. In reality, the school of thought is the critical analyzing of symbols, of which actions, thoughts, or objects within the work contribute to an abstract or inferred “message” the author wishes to bring to the attention of the reader. Beneath the numerous choices that Montag makes, along with the choices of his wife, Mildred, the fire captain Beatty, the Mechanical Hound, the litterateurs at the conclusion of the novel, etc. lies Bradbury’s message to his readers - that the thirst for truth will be supreme to the desire to be subservient in any fashion, let alone governmentally sponsored promotion of widespread ignorance.
