Fahrenheit 451 Mildred

Mildred is seen throughout the story as Montag's wife. She does many things in the amount of time she is given, and most of them make no sense. Such as her suicide attempt. She swallowed so many pills that she was going to die, and then she denied it afterwards. And the wierd thing is that she in fact had no idea that she had attempted suicide, and claimed it was an accident. That she simply forgot she had taken pills, and then took more pills. "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 forty of them in you." (Bradbury 19) So as the average indoctrinated citizen she is, she goes on as if life is normal. That is until Montag showed her his stash of books, and she secretly burned them while Montag was away. She also called an alarm on the house which caused a big ruckus. "Mildred!" She ran past with her body stiff, her face floured with powder, her mouth gone, without lipstick. "mildred, you didn't put in the alarm!" She shoved the valise in the waiting beetle, climbed in, and sat mumbling, "Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now..." (Bradbury 114) Although this whole ruckus is one of the several things that caused Montag to coincidentally not be in the city at the same time a certain bombing run went on and thus saved his life. So in the end all she was really good for was looking out for herself, but at the same time her actions were understandable. Her being indoctrinated to actually believe what Montag had done was actually bad would lead the average person to report such bad things to law enforcements. It's also strange how she doesn't remember where she met Montag, which does indeed say a lot about their relationship.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451;. New York: Ballantine, 1953. Print.