(4)

As well as showing joy, one can also use alliteration to heighten tension. Notice how in this example, the words beginning with s really jump out at you:

Before he reached the corner, however, he slowed as if a wind had sprung up from nowhere, as if someone has called his name. (4)

In this context, Bradbury can drop the use of alliteration altogether to show a change in mood:

He had felt that a moment prior to his making the turn, someone has been there. (4)

The lack of alliteration in this sentence gives the impression that he's no longer sure of what's happening. Although in the following few pages he doesn't drop alliteration altogether, Bradbury uses it less as Montag begins to talk to the girl. This expresses how cautious and unsure he is of her.

On page 24, the author uses alliteration to emphasize the danger of the Mechanical Hound:

The Mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse. (24)

Sometimes alliteration can be as simple as repeating words. In these following two examples, the author repeats the words "talked," "inch," and "face" to express how Montag feels about his wife being killed:

He saw her leaning toward the great shimmering walls of color and motion where the family talked and talked and talked to her... said nothing of the bomb that was an inch, now a half-inch, now a quarter inch from the top of the hotel. (159)

Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt, or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millie's face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time, she saw her own face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left, she saw her own face reflected there. (159)

When looking at Ray Bradbury's overall body of work, as a writer he tends to favor a very poetic kind of prose: richly descriptive, metaphorical, and imagery-intensive. With that in mind, when looking towards Farenheit 451, you should not be surprised to find there's a lot of alliteration within the book. Far more than two examples.

Actually, I'd start by noting the titles of the chapters. Of those three sections, two of them are alliterative. The second chapter is entitled: "The Sieve and the Sand" (note the repetition of the S sound) and the final chapter is titled "Burning Bright." In addition, you can see alliteration in the name of some of his characters. We see in chapter 1, Montag meet a teenager named Clarisse McClellan, and later, in chapter 2, we find hear mention of a presidential candidate named Hubert Hoag.

For two final examples, taken from the book's prose, I'd point first towards the book's opening page, where we read: "his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history." (Farenheit 451 1). Notice the specific sequence of blazing, burning, and bring-down, all in close proximity.

Just a few pages later, when Montag first encounters Clarisse, the narration tells us "her head was half bent to watch her shoes stir the circling leaves" (3)—here again we see the use of alliteration, first of the "h" sound, and then of the "s." Keep in mind, both of these examples are drawn from the book's first few pages. Alliteration is a frequent tool Bradbury employs.

As a final note, be aware that there are different editions of Farenheit 451, so the page numbers will vary depending on which one is employed. For this answer, I've consulted the Sixtieth Anniversary Paperback Edition, published by Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Alliteration occurs when the same consonant is used more than once at the beginning of words in close proximity. My examples both come from chapter 1.

An example of alliteration occurs a few pages into the first chapter. Montag has just finished his first, startling, conversation with Clarisse. He walks into his dark house and dark bedroom. The room is described as follows:

It was like coming into the cold marbled room of a mausoleum after the moon had set.

This conveys what a cold contrast it is to return home after his vibrant encounter with Clarisse. But the word "mausoleum" also foreshadows what Montag will soon discover: that Mildred has attempted suicide. The alliteration in the line occurs in the repetition of "m" sounds: "marbled," "mausoleum," and "moon."

A few paragraphs later, Bradbury again uses alliteration, this time to describe Mildred's body when Montag finds it after she has overdosed on pills:

The breath coming out of the nostrils was so faint it stirred only the furthest fringes of life, a small leaf, a black feather, a single fibre of hair.

Here, the alliteration comes from the repeated "f" sound in "faint," "furthest," "fringes," "feather, "fibre."

Bradbury is a lyrical writer, whose gift is his ability to incorporate poetic techniques into his prose, so it should not be difficult to find examples of alliteration in this novel.

For the page numbers to be meaningful, we need to be using the same edition. Mine is the Del Ray Book published by The Random House Publishing Group, 1991. If you use another edition, the pages may or may not align, so I will provide additional detail to help orient you.

In the section entitled "The Hearth and the Salamander," on page 4, Montag walks out of the fire station and heads for the subway.  Here we find a run of alliteration with sibilant "s" sounds that serve to suggest the sound of a hissing fire and associate it with the protagonist:

"He walked out of the fire station and along the midnight street toward the subway where the silent air-propelled train slid soundlessly..."

In the same section, on page 8, Montag, a burner of books, recites to Clarisse his "official slogan," a burning schedule of poets and novelists presented as alliterative couplets:

"Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner..."