Bradbury's descriptions of the firehouse in
are pretty mundane, which is surely deliberate. The place looks almost
identical to any other firehouse we might encounter. From the showers where the firemen wash off
the accumulated filth and soot to the card tables where they play games until the next call
arrives, the layout of the building is familiar to anyone who's ever been inside a
firehouse.
And yet the firemen who work here are anything but similar to what
we might see in the real world. Their job isn't to put out fires but to start them. This makes
the normality of their working environment all the more jarring and unnerving. The sheer
ordinariness and banality of the firehouse stand as a stark contrast to the grotesque subversion
of the fireman's duties in which Beatty, Montag, and the other men regularly
engage.
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