“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”

This metaphor describes Montag as an “amazing conductor”, who is someone that creatively conducts music, when he is burning books. This suggests that the only human creativity in the future of Fahrenheight 451 has become destructive of history.

“Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending.”