Fahrenheit- Analysis and thoughts

In Ray Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451, I found one character to be especially intriguing. This character is none other than Montag's wife, Millie. Millie is a kind of 'comparative character', her main purpose in the novel is to show the reader how extremely different Montag is from the rest of society. Millie is also the only other person that we get to know with the same exact views and outlook on life as the rest of society. Because of this, it is easy to speculate that Millie represents society as a whole.

Millie is not her own person. She lives by what society says is right and wrong, and she views others who stray from this view as dangerous. Millie is nothing more than an empty shell of a human being, a drone if you will. She allows herself to be filled with what everyone wants her to be, not who she wants to be. Society is against reading and so Millie is to. Millie is in fact afraid of books and when in one scene she touches one with her foot, she cringes and pulls it away. Her reaction to the book is much like society's, utter fear and repulsion.

Millie is also devoid of most emotions, just like society wanted. She cannot comprehend certain aspects of her feelings, she cannot ascertain their deeper meanings. At one point in the novel she explains that when she is angry she likes to drive fast in the country, ans sometimes hit dogs or cats. To most readers this is horrifying since we have been brought up in a society that finds this action morally unsound we find it hard to understand how killing can make one happy. Millie has been brought up in a world that does not require human emotion, especially human sadness. Even the death of another person does not affect her, she just basically shrugs her shoulders and changes the subject, just like the society wanted people to be able to do.

Millie is a mirror through which society is reflected in the novel. Millie was shallow and heavy, holding Montag back. When Millie is killed at the end of the novel it is as if Montag has overcome society's hold on him, for society died with Millie's death.


Although this was not one of my favorite novels, i did not totally dislike it. I personally am not a big fan of sci-fi and so decided early on that i was not going to like the book, but once I started reading it I found it to be better than I had anticipated. I found that it contained many similarities to today's world, which in some ways was rather frightening. I also liked how the book was not so futuristic that it became hard to relate too. This is one of those books that the more you think about it, the more it seems to grow on you and you realize the similarities and importance that it has to today's society. Bradbury was able to find the weaknesses in society and effectively portray them and their consequences Fahrenheit 451.