Fahrenheit 451 Hound Quotes

Bradbury uses machines and mechanisms like the hound to show how the people are kept in fear and hunted down if not in submission. As Montag has just finished killing Beatty, he is confronted by the mechanical hound, “It made a single last leap into the air before coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ten feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame gun with him.” (Bradbury 114). The hound is described as this horrid creature

Montag describes how he feels about his wife when he says, “Late in the night he looked over at Mildred. She was awake. There was a tiny dance of melody in the air, her Seashell was tamped in her ear again and she was listening to far people in far places, her eyes wide and staring at the fathoms of blackness above her in the ceiling.” (Bradbury 39). Her infatuation with the seashells is indicative of where she finds her value in life. The fact that she always has her seashells in or the screens on shows her total dependence on what is said through those mediums. Mildred has a total dependance and unquestioned acceptance of whatever they tell her what is right and wrong. She ceases to be her own person with her own ideas. She has become what she is told to be and does not give it a second thought. “Advertising controls her desires. Mildred listens to a constant stream of ads on the Seashell radio that fits in her ear whenever she is not in the TV parlor—even in her sleep. She seems to be satisfied with her life; however, her suicide attempt suggests that subconsciously the emptiness of her existence haunts her.” (Levine). Levine suggests that while she is being controlled by various media outlets and the things they are telling her, she is still her own person who is striving to think apart from the controlling information that

Montag tells Mildred about what happened the night Mildred the night before saying, “I wanted to talk to you.” He paused. “You took all the pills in your bottle last night.” “Oh I wouldn’t do that,” she said, surprised. “The bottle was empty.” “I wouldn’t do a thing like that. Why would I do a thing like that?” she said. “Maybe you took two pills and forgot and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and were so dopey you kept right on until you had thirty or fourty of them in you.” “Heck,” she said, “What would I want to go and do a silly thing like that for?” (Bradbury 17). When Montag confronts Mildred about her overdosing the night prior, she responds in denial and adamantly refuses the notion that she is unhappy. She only denies what happened and had said that she feels as though she is hungover and wonders at the party that they didn’t have the night before. ”After the fireman Montag's vacuous wife, Mildred, attempts suicide, two handymen come to detoxify her; they treat her as if she were a carpet to be cleaned.” (Drennan). Drennan describes the handymen who come and detoxify Mildred while she is in her drug-induced coma. They talk about how commonly overdose events happen and that they had to leave Montag and Mildred to tend to another person. They use terms that transform Mildred into an inanimate object that needs to be cleaned rather than a person who is