Fahrenheit 451 Literary Analysis

Mildred is the wife of Montag. She has many different interests than Montag does which makes them foil characters. There is nothing very spectacular about Mildred. She is very bland and is obsessed with television. She believs that her family is the television shows. Montag on the other hand is appreciates books. Mildred says to Montag, “See what you are doing to us? You’ll ruin us!” (76). This quote shows that Mildred does not appreciate what Montag wants. She does not respect his interests and does not want to be married to someone who is doing illegal acts. Montag sees the books as a good thing and as an innspiration. Mildred sees them as

Montag feels at the begining of the novel that the communication is greatly lacking in society. People are becoming very ignorant and turning reallife realationships aside. They now turn to their "tv families". One victim of neglecting real life realtionships is Mildred, Montag's wife. Montag truley hates this. "Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read." (2.125). Montag hopes that his wife and him can rejoin their connection through the books, but is sadly wrong and must find some one else, Faber.

Of all characters, Bradbury uses Mildred and Montag’s relationship to effectively broadcast the loss of relationships in the society they live in. Bradbury shows that Mildred and Montag have little emotion toward one another, causing them to have no

Montag’s Wife, Mildred, is a negative influence on him, trying to push him away emotionally and physically. She does not know who she really is and lives in an illusionary world with her obsession of television shows and believing they are real. He is so confused because she tries to ignore it ever happened thinking about all the bad things; “fire, sleeping tablets, men disposable tissue, coattails, blow, wad, flush...Rain. The storm. The uncle laughing...The whole world pouring down..." (19). After this incident he looks at Mildred in a different light and is someone who he can’t relate to. Another way she separates herself from Montag is through her "family", which is a television show. Montag constantly asks Millie “[if that] family loves [her]… love [her] with all their heart and soul" (83). Her world isn’t based in reality; they are clearly on different paths. Hers is one of illusion and his is becoming that of a totally self-aware person. She blocks everything and everyone out that is around her and lives within the show. Mildred opens Montag 's eyes to the real world and shows him that most people are uncaring and narcissistic.

Montag soon begins to enter the bonfire stage. Clarisse, is an observant, curious, open-minded and unique 17 year old girl. Montag, after meeting a couple times with Clarisse, is when his eyes truly open that his society is full of fake realities. He becomes observant and starts asking questions about his society. While being with Clarisse, Montag would smell the leaves and notice the small details; therefore, he was having a shift from being a prisoner to going up to the bonfire. On page #48 it says, “ You’re not sick,” said Mildred. Montag fell back in bed. He reached under the pillow. The hidden book was still there. “Mildred, how would it be if, well, maybe I quit my job awhile?” “You want to give up everything? After all these years of working, because, one night, some woman and her books-” “You should have seen her, Millie!”…. “You weren’t there, you didn’t see ,” he said. “ There must be something in the books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” This is the event that changed Montags viewpoint on books

Instead, Mildred showed her ignorance and was stubborn about changing for the right reasons, committing a cowardly act of snitching on Montag, therefore conforming once again to the terrible, lying community they live in. Mildred lives a pathetic, lonely life consisting of her loved ones which only contained televisions. In the quote, while Mildred was running from the house, she was worrying and feeling regretful but not for Montag, for leaving her “family” behind. Montag on the other hand, differs from Mildred. He started off his life as a conformist and became courageous through others opening his

In Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is one man attempting to turn his society upside down. After discovering for himself the injustice of his society as it shuns all literature, Montag relentlessly fights to fix this corruption and endures large amounts of persecution in the process (Bradbury). Meanwhile, in his autobiography, Narrative in the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass recounts his past as a single slave doing his best to right the evils of southern slaveholders. Although one takes place in a fantasy and one during 19th century America, both works portray individuals going against the unjust grain of their societies, and persevering through extreme opposition in the process. After escaping the grip of slavery, Douglass recounts his life story to a curious, yet most-likely privileged audience in an intelligent and revealing manner. Throughout his narrative, Douglass praises the surprising resilience of the human spirit even in the midst of constant hardship.

Author Ray Bradbury once quoted, “There are worse crimes than burning books; one is not reading them”. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, a crazy-dumb society has banned books for no reason. If someone is caught reading or even owning a book, they will be brought to jail, and the book and the owners house perish by the hot flames of the firemen. It is up to Guy Montag to attempt to make the law like it used to be. In Fahrenheit 451, the foils to Montag, Clarisse and Mildred, serve as opposites by their different effects on Montag.

Mildred's influenced Montag in a negative way. For example Montauk walked into the bedroom and kicked "[an] empty sleeping pill bottle that was full at the start of the day" showing that Mildred taken all of the pills in the bottle.(13) Mildred she would rather take pills and not think which Montag grew to abhor. As we often do when we sleep "Mildred slept with seashells in her ears" just like the radio or the tv we leave on when we sleep.(13) As many of us do today she spends much of her time watching tv or listening to a device unconnected to a social life.

“That’s awful! ...Why should I read? What for?”(Bradbury, 73) Mildred hates the fact that her house and her ‘family’ would burn down if Beatty and the other firemen found out about Montag and his books. Mildred doesn’t understand why Montag wants to reason with her and what he finds so special in books. Mildred is a selfish woman who cares only about herself and her friends. As long as nothing happened to her ‘family’, she’d be fine.

When Montag returns home, he realizes that Mildred has burned a few of the books, which makes him protect them more. Mildred is a very careless and shallow person, while Montag is a very smart and thoughtful person and it is clearly shown throughout the

It is clear that Mildred is one of the least-informed characters in this book by how heavily she relies on technology and how afraid she is of books and the knowledge they contain. “Mildred backed away as if she were suddenly confronted by a pack of mice that had come up out of the floor. He could hear her breathing rapidly and her face was paled out and her eyes were fastened wide. She said his name over, twice, three times. Then moaning, she ran forward, seized a book and ran toward the kitchen incinerator.”-pg 66. This quote illustrates Mildred’s immediate reaction when Guy reveals his hidden stash of books to her. She is clearly afraid and unwilling to even give literature a chance, instead instantly opting to destroy the books. Not only is she timid, she also fails to make connections to actual people, instead making relationships with the people in her TV. “‘Will you turn the parlour off?’ he asked. ‘That's my family.’”-pg 48-49. This quote shows a conversation between Montag

One night, Montag gets into a heated debate with Mildred on the importance of books. Done with the quarrel: “‘Let me alone,’ said Mildred. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

“‘Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth’”(John F. Kennedy). In the novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who burns books, which are illegal. Montag questions society and decided to read, soon becoming a fugitive. Guy Montag’s ideology changes and grows throughout the novel with the help of important events. At first, Montag enjoys burning books, but soon he begins to save the very books he is supposed to burn. Montag then rejects his society completely by reading books and becoming a fugitive.

The society in Fahrenheit 451 is all about living fast, loud, and quickly. They never take their time or leaving space for love ones. In like manner, Montag’s wife, Mildred seems to be the manifestation of this ideology in the book. She rarely talks to or notices Montag despite them being married. She does not