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Conformity In Fahrenheit 451, By Ray Bradbury

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Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is a dystopian novel about a society that believes books need to be burned. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who burns books. Montag never questions his job and finds book burning pleasurable. When Montag meets Clarisse, he starts to question if book burning is a good thing in society. Montag secretly starts to read books and tries to convince other people that what the police are doing is wrong. However, it backfires, and Montag is figuring out what to do now. Ray Bradbury uses characters and groups such as Mildred and the police to demonstrate how dangerous conformity is. Mildred’s actions show that conformity is dangerous and harmful to society. After Montag hears about Clarisse’s death, he feels …show more content…

‘Is that better?’” (Bradbury 46). Mildred cares more about her TV family than Montag, her husband. Mildred is on the parlor walls so much, she makes an emotional connection with the characters on the TV, calling them family. Being on the parlor walls keeps Mildred distracted from what is happening in the real world, which emotionally disconnects her from her own husband. When Beatty and Montag arrive at Montag’s house after the alarm went off, Montag knows he is caught, but wonders how they found out, then, “...Mildred came down the steps, running... ‘Mildred!’... ‘Mildred, you didn’t put in the alarm!’” (Bradbury 108). Mildred is willing to turn in his own husband since he was hiding books. Mildred obeys the rules the society is supposed to follow, even if it means turning in your loved one. Ray Bradbury uses Mildred to demonstrate that conforming is wrong and that it is important to have the freedom of thought. The police make people believe events that are not accurate and …show more content…

Don’t think the police don’t know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns out, it’s very usable indeed. It saves the face.” (Bradbury 141-142). The police already have a victim in case someone like Montag starts questioning their job. The police tell the people that they have captured Montag, when in reality, they have not found him. People think the hunt is fun, and think of it as a carnival. By Faking the death of Montag, society believes that the police can not be outsmarted. If the police tell the people that they have not found Montag, the people will see them as a failure. Beatty talks to Montag about what the police’s goal and priority is, and tells him that, “...People want to be happy, isn’t that right? Haven’t you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren’t they? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these” (Bradbury 56). Beatty believes that people should be happy without books, that they are not necessary, and that they will cause

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Montag got caught by the captain of the fireman’s department, Beatty. Montag ends up killing Beatty in order to escape, and he meets a few people down by the river and joins their community, living in the shadows. Throughout the novel Bradbury uses language to express the

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Beatty explains to Montag, “‘Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths,’” (Bradbury 84).

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Montag starts arguing with Mildred about how she is acting. She is depressed and does not even know it. Mildred thinks that the voices in the walls are her family. Montag tries to get her to see what is really happening in society. She is so unaware of her actions that Montag has top tell her, “maybe you took two pills and forgot and took to more, and forgot again and took two more, and were so dopey you kept right on until you had thirty or forty of them in you” (Bradbury 17).

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The first line of dialogue that Montag says is “it was a pleasure to burn”(pg. 1), which elucidates that he is just like the rest of the society. Bradbury introduces both of these characters as ignorant so the reader is able to draw a similarity between the way Montag is illustrated in the first page and how Mildred is characterized throughout the novel. This aids in tracing Montag’s coming of age journey because as he gets enlightened, the reader is able to distinguish how his mindset starts to diverge further away from Mildred’s. At the very end of the second chapter leading into the beginning of the third chapter, Beatty orders Montag to burn his own house, and as Beatty is speaking to Montag, Mildred runs past them “with her body stiff”(pg. 108). Through the employment of body language, Bradbury implies that Mildred is the one that turned Montag in to

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As seen above, Ray Bradbury uses contrasting characters like Clarisse and Mildred in Fahrenheit 451 to show two different people with different characteristics and perspectives in the novel’s society. Clarisse is not common in their society because while everyone else is watching their parlor walls; she’s observing and thinking. I feel that in today’s society; the number of people like Clarisse is becoming fewer due to technology advancing in our own society. Mildred, however, is the opposite because she’s the exact definition of a “normal person” in her society. Unlike Clarisse, Mildred spends all her time watching the parlor walls, and she becomes a roadblock for Montag with his new found love of thinking and reading.

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In the beginning, Montag is revealed as an unconscious human-being in the eerie society. Montag’s motivation is not clear in the novel at first because

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Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is a novel about a futuristic society where books are banned and firemen burn books rather than put out fires. The main character Montag is a fireman who lives with his wife Mildred. Montag ends up stealing books which is against the law especially because he is a fireman; and Mildred is against anything that has to do with books. Society wants everyone to be happy but there 's an alarming mechanical hound in this novel that kills people and is asymbol of fear. Bradbury’s novel shows how a society overcomes the eradication of books through the use of symbolism, motif, and imagery.

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This shows the lack of authentic human relationships, even between husband and wife. This quote uses truncated sentences, enjambment and third person narrative. In ‘Burning Bright’ Bradbury writes “‘Poor family, poor family, oh poor family, oh everything is gone.” In this excerpt, Mildred is evacuating her home after she turned in an alarm against Montag for protecting books. As she passes Montag, she repeatedly says “poor family” and “everything’s gone”.

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Society Changes People Society can change people positively or negatively. In the novel, Farenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, Mildred is the wife of the main character, Guy Montag. First, we realize that Mildred is self-centered because she only thinks about her own benefits. She does not care about anyone but her fake family.

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The superficiality of societal relationships reflects a lack of the need for people to form meaningful bonds. Technology is praised by the residents of society, causing a lack of attention to companionship. Characters such as Mildred, Montag's wife, are depicted as being deeply engrossed in shallow entertainment and disconnected from genuine human

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He understands Montag's attraction for books but claims that he himself overcame it” (Eller). The corrupt government of this world heavily relies on complete control and repetition of what the people see everyday, even the slightest bit of difference in a person can get them killed, Beatty admits that he had these desires to read but got over it and is “perfectly happy’ as is. “The result, Beatty claims, is a peaceful and happy culture. Yet what Beatty calls "peace" and "happiness" translates practically into obedience, which lulls the populace into a blissful sort of ignorance. This is illustrated by the reference to Mildred's suicide attempt as a common phenomenon in the city” (Levine).

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Mildred in the novel is Montag’s wife. She is the perfect example of a conformed person in this society because she is brainwashed by the tv that the government has set in place. Proof of such is when she said, " 'Books aren't people. You read and I look all around, but there isn't anybody!' ".

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Montag’s wife Mildred is an example of someone who conforms to society and can not imagine a lifestyle outside the one she has. In Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 Mildred says to Montag “books aren’t people. You, read and I looked all around, but there isn’t anybody! Now, my family is people.

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Bradbury took these aspects to the extreme to convey his message using a dystopian world, and the character that most embraces and embodies the values of this society is Mildred. Mildred, as a typical citizen, is the opposite of the enlightened Clarisse. She is always watching television in the parlour, and when she is not doing that she is listening to her Seashells. When Montag brings books into their house, she is horrified and she ends up being the one who reports Montag to the firemen. By all accounts she appears to have fully bought into the lifestyle that her society promotes, and says that she is happy that way and “proud of it” (68).

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Montag mistakenly reads poetry to his wife Mildred and her guests. The guest and Mildred report Montag, resulting in his boss, Captain Beatty, to order Montag to burn down his own house. Montag responds by killing his boss and running away to the countryside. Meanwhile, the city that he left was destroyed by nuclear weapons. A possible message of this story are the dangers of censorship and mass media.

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