Fahrenheit 451 Essay Questions Essay

Clarisse’s Question

“Are you happy?” This is the question that forces Guy Montag, the protagonist of the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, to deeply question his society’s fulfillment with life. In Montag’s society, people consider a happy life as one that is simple and free from individuality and personality. Montag’s wife, Mildred, represents the majority of society in the way that she spends her days mindlessly consuming media through her television walls and seashells. Throughout the novel, Bradbury uses character realizations, drug usage, and artificial relationships to paint the society in Fahrenheit 451 as overly unhappy.

Bradbury uses Mildred’s overdose of sleeping pills as an example of how careless and unphased their

One night, after their conversation, Clarisse asks Montag, “‘Are you happy?’”. Montag says to himself, “Happy! Of all the nonsense… Of course I’m happy. What does she think? I’m not?” (8) Montag is shocked by Clarisse’s question and views it as an absurd thing to ask. He is confused as to why she would ask that because the idea of questioning one’s happiness was something very odd and suspicious to him. People in Montag’s society rarely talk about their emotions with one another, and always perceive themselves and others as happy. They are too distracted with their television and seashells that they fail to realize their unhappiness. After the two part ways, Montag laughs about the question for a while, before he stops and begins to deeply reflect on himself.

“He felt his smile slide away… Darkness. He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as a true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going back to knock on her door and ask for it back.”

She covers up the void she feels from her missing relationships by further immersing herself in her artificial life. Mildred asks Montag to buy her another television wall: “‘How long before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in?’ ‘That's one-third of my yearly pay’ ‘If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms. We could do without a few things.’” (18) Mildred is so addicted to virtual reality that she is willing to give up her relationship with her husband for it. Instead of expanding her relationship with her husband, she begs Montag to spend his money on another television wall so that she can feel more connected to her artificial family. Mildred wants to immerse herself in her television because she can achieve instant satisfaction from it without putting forth any effort. Improving her relationship with Montag would require hard work and for her to deal with complicated emotions, which is something that Mildred is not willing to do. Mildred may think that she is satisfied, but her lack of a meaningful relationship causes her to feel unhappy, which she covers up by immersing herself even more in the artificial stimulus. Not only is she unconcerned about her relationship with her husband, but she is also unphased when her