When Montag comes to his own house, and burns up his own books in his bedroom, they seem like birds leaping and dancing in the air. On one level, this is simply a physical description of what the burning pages look like. On a more symbolic level, it is not surprising that Montag's books would be likened to birds, creatures with wings that fly. The ideas that are inside their pages are not really being destroyed, for they will take flight with Montag.

This imagery brings to mind the phoenix, the mythological bird that was regenerated through fire. Montag wears a phoenix symbol on his fireman's suit, but in the end, it is the books that can't be killed. As Granger says near the close of the novel:

There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again.

This is an example of the powerful imagery for which Bradbury is famous. Here we have a simile, a comparison using "like" or "as". The books, which have been set on fire, are being compared to flying birds. As they burn, they move about, looking as though they are leaping and dancing. It is a very dark, rather disturbing comparison, as they look like birds on fire. The papers fly about in the flames, resembling "red and yellow feathers." The fact that the books are being compared to living creatures is important. Bradbury is emphasizing the peculiar nature of books. Each story has a life of its own, and each reader brings a different perspective to that life. When those lives burn, they resemble, in Montag's eyes, burning birds that attempt to fly to freedom.