Mildred Montag in Fahrenheit 451 Essay Sample

Imagine if your mind was being completely altered into something that causes you to have no real purpose. Is it scary? Mildred Montag in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 has been cursed with this intellect. In this dystopian world having books in your house is punishable by getting your house burned down, the people who are starting the fires are the new version firemen. The main jobs of firemen now are to burn the houses that contain the books. No one thinks about them anymore anyways, everyone is caught up with their televisions. Mildred Montag is a fine example of a future average citizen.

The first real interaction we have with Mildred is Guy finding her in bed with her seashells on. Seashells can be classified as another addictive device that is always playing music or the news. He trips over a bottle of sleeping pills and when he reaches to touch her face he realizes that Mildred has overdosed on the pills. After he realizes Guy takes her to the “Emergency Hospital”(Bradbury 11) There was a specific machine that pumped her stomach and the man explained it as “We get these cases nine or ten a night” ( Bradbury 13). That shows a pattern of unhappiness and how suicide rates have gone exceedingly higher. Though people have different theories surrounding the reason for why Mildred overdosed, for example, it was a suicide attempt or like Guy proposed earlier maybe she forgot how much she had taken so she just kept taking more without realizing. I choose to believe the first theory, that she did try to commit suicide. Any small gestures of happiness sparked through her are artificial. She's not the smartest and that's by choice, not necessarily her choice but the government. Though it seems like there are people like Guy Montag who can break the thought process, she has become very susceptible to thinking this way. 

At home, she has three walls of televisions installed in her and Guy Montag's home. The morning after Mildreds attempted suicide she asks “How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in” (Bradbury 18). The interesting thing about the televisions is that they broadcast shows in which Mildred had a part to speak, a section of a script and this allows her to have an unreal connection with the TV. She has been successfully conditioned to the no-book society. She doesn't seem content at all, only when she's participating in the television program and even then I feel like you can’t possibly be happy with the repeating lifestyle. Now she is just simply feeding an addiction she can’t get help for because it's normal. 

Nearing the end of the book Guy is being chased through the town while a mechanical hound is tracking him and the chase is being filmed for the news. The news that Mildred is probably watching on her television. Through the hunt, Guy's scent has become untraceable so a random man is now going to be killed solely for entertainment not even the tiniest bit of justice. I wonder the emotions that went through Mildred as she watched the chase of the supposed Montag down the street. Was she upset that he supposedly died or had she already forgotten? Did she cry? After all, she was the one who called him in for having books. Or like Montag, there was no real connection or purpose of their marriage; mourning the loss of one another was more like losing someone you've met only once or twice. Was their relationship one of an acquaintance? I think that how Mildred will feel is not something different than her current state because she was not happy, to begin with.

In the end, I don't feel bad for Mildred even though she is a product of brainwashing. If she would have listened to Guy, she could have turned off the tv, and understood the reason why books were burned. When Ms. Bowles had yelled at Montag saying “I've always said, poetry and tears, poetry and suicide, and crying and awful feelings, poetry, and sickness; all that mush? Now I've had it proved to me!”(Bradbury 97). That had not helped Mildred see the clear understanding of books the reason for why you need sadness and it's not something you need to push away and all that “mush”. She could have been a much more noble character, but of course, she did the exact opposite. I also believe that she was never happy with that life. The government was completely flawed and when people do the same thing every day the tiniest bit of suspicion will arise in everyone.