Sam Wales Ms. Hinko English 9H - Block 5 30 April 2024 Fahrenheit 451 Thesis Essay In the novel Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury shows the reader that self-imposed censorship is harmful because if you only care about being happy and not feeling uncomfortable, you end up with a boring life without real connections or meaningful relationships. He shows this message through characters in the novel such as Montag, Mildred, and Faber who have experiences with changing their minds on society, following society, and rebelling against society. The characters in the novel all show different messages and values, all linking up to the main idea. The first character that Ray Bradbury uses is the main protagonist, Montag. Montag is a regular guy who goes with …show more content…
The next character Bradbury used in the novel is a character called Mildred. Mildred is Montag’s wife and is different from Montag being that she sees nothing wrong with society. Mildred is very against the idea of Montag having books and even burns Montag's books herself. She is also different from Montag because she is very against critical thinking and follows society by watching a lot of TV and listening to sounds through an earpiece so that she does not have to think. Bradbury makes it very clear that Mildred and Montag do not love each other as married people should, but that Mildred is more concerned about other unmeaningful things. An example of this is when Mildred was asking Montag to buy a fourth TV wall and says: “It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long do you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall TV put in? It's only two thousand dollars." "That's one-third of my yearly pay" (Bradbury 18). This shows that Mildred obsessively cares about things that will make her comfortable and content even when Montag tells Mildred that buying a fourth TV would take up a third of his yearly