Subway Train

The Subway Train is the primary mode of rapid transit in the dystopian city of Fahrenheit 451, a silent, air-propelled vehicle that carries Montag through the dead cellars of the metropolis and becomes the setting for his desperate attempt to memorize the Bible against the relentless assault of a commercial jingle.

Design and Atmosphere

The Subway Train is a silent, air-propelled vehicle that slides soundlessly down its lubricated flue in the earth, releasing its passengers with a great puff of warm air onto a cream-tiled escalator rising to the suburb. It is a vacuum-underground, rushing through the dead cellars of the town, jolting its riders. The train's interior is a sensory assault: the car is loud, filled with a radio that vomits a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The passengers, their mouths faintly twitching to the rhythm of the jingle, are pounded into submission by the noise, with no place to run.

Montag's Journey and the Sieve of Memory

On the subway, Montag carries the Bible open in his hands, seized by the desperate thought that if he reads fast and reads all, maybe some of the sand will stay in the sieve. He clenches the book in his fists, willing himself to memorize each line before he must hand it over to Captain Beatty. The train's environment, however, is designed to prevent exactly this kind of concentrated thought. The relentless jingle for Denham's Dentifrice blares, its rhythm one two, one two three, one two, one two three, drowning out the sacred text. Montag tries to shut it out, whispering "Consider the lilies of the field" to himself, but the commercial's repetition—"Denham's Dentifrice"—is a fierce whisper of hot sand through an empty sieve, a direct assault on his ability to retain the words.

The Breaking Point

The conflict between the book and the commercial reaches a breaking point. Montag finds himself on his feet, a plea and a cry so terrible that the shocked inhabitants of the loud car stare, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The train radio vomits upon him in retaliation. When the train hisses to a stop at Knoll View, Montag, screaming in his mind, plunges through the slicing door just in time. He runs on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, wanting to feel his feet move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifts after him, "Denham's Denham's Denham's," as the train hisses like a snake and vanishes in its hole. The subway thus becomes a physical and psychological arena where the state's control over attention and thought is enforced through a cacophony designed to prevent any meaningful reflection.