Fahrenheit 451 Society Quotes

Society can change a person positively or negatively. In the novel, Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, Mildred is the wife of the main character, Guy Montag. Society has made Mildred self-centered, robotic, and unfeeling. First, Mildred shows signs of being self-centered, or selfish. This is best shown when Mildred says,”’It’s really fun. It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed(18)’”. This quote is saying that Mildred wants a fourth television so she can have more fun. As the only person who works in the relationship, Montag does not get paid a lot of money. He works as a fireman. Mildred does not care about their financial status at this moment in time. She is only focused on herself and no one else.Later in the novel, Montag’s boss, Captain Beatty, gives a speech to Montag and his wife on how their society came to be. In his speech, Beatty talks about how society has made Mildred self-centered. He does this by explaining how people only care about technology. Books were no
The best example of this is on page 44 of the novel. Mildred says, “ ‘No. The same girl. McClellan. McClellan. Run over by a car. Four days ago. I’m not sure. But I think she’s dead. The family moved out anyway, ‘ ”. Clarisse McClellan, in this society, was considered odd and nobody knew how she became herself. Montag had grown close to the young seventeen year old, and for four days he did not know where she had gone. He finds out that his wife, the person who he is supposed to love, knew four days earlier that Clarisse had died and hadn’t told him this shows signs of Mildred’s sense of unfeeling. In Captain Beatty’s speech, he talks about how everyone in society wants to be happy. Mildred was so focused on being happy herself, that she didn’t care about her husband being sad and having a sense of loneliness. This makes one forget that they are actually