Fahrenheit 451 Essay
In many novels authors use characterization to display how people in a certain society or group act, furthermore characterization is also used to show how individuals change over time and how they pick up traits from others and integrate into society. In the novel Fahrenheit 451 the author Ray Bradbury uses many literary tools, one of the most prominent being characterization. Addiotionally the author uses actions of characters, dialogue and narrative description to model how people will follow the social norm. Likewise Ray Bradbury uses characterization to imply that people will always take the path of least resistance; they won’t rebel, they are happy to be cloistered and lied to so long as they have an illusion of happiness.
The first person who models how people recoil from harsh truths and how they hide behind a
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Mildred’s actions and dialogue elude the impression that she truly believes she’s happy and she maintains the illusion by refusing to hear or think differently. We see this on when Mildred doesn’t remember trying to kill herself and she says “I didn’t do that. Never in a billion years.” (pg 16) The dialogue shows us that Mildred thinks she is happy and she doesn’t believe she would try to kill herself because that would suggest that she is actually unhappy and she works hard to stay in her own world. By doing this she essentially lives in the parlor walls, and she ceases to live; instead becoming an empty shell of a person who cares more about the parlour family than her husband. Ray Bradbury portrays the average citizen through Mildred, and her actions mirror those of her friends. Ray Bradbury uses actions of characters to show how fake happiness is when Mrs Phelps cries after Montag reads a poem. Her actions show how hearing something brutally honest cracks her mask of happiness and her unperturbed demeanor