"He still did not want outside light. He pulled out his igniter, felt the salamander etched on its silver disc, gave it a flick... Thomas Bulfinch, from Mythology, explains that "...the authority of numerous sage philosophers, at the head of whom are Aristotle and Pliny, affirms this power of the salamander. According to them, the animal not only resists fire, but extinguishes it, and when he sees the flame charges it as an enemy which he well knows how to vanquish." (Source: The Environmental Literacy Council) It is ironic that Bradbury purposefully chose a salamander as a symbol for the (second definition of) fireman. Considering that the firemen of that definition are required to start fires, Montag becomes like a mythical salamander when he summons the courage to rebel.
Two moonstones looked up at him in the light of his small hand-held fire; two pale moonstones buried in a creek of clear water over which the life of the world ran, not touching them. It is, again, ironic how Bradbury uses nature as an extended metaphor here, even though the people in Montag's world are so disconnected from the natural world. Like these citizens, Mildred is cut off from the world, as she sees it from her television parlor, as Bradbury cynically says, a true 'living room.' She is, in fact, a symbol of Montag's world, which he must let go of at the end of the book."Mildred!" Her face was like a snow-covered island upon which rain might fall, but it felt no rain; over which clouds might pass their moving shadows; but she felt no shadow. There was only the singing of the thimble-wasps in her tamped-shut ears...." Thimble-wasps (something like an earplug?) are also a large symbol throughout the book. They are representative of communication and connection between human beings.
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