Repetition of Suicide in Fahrenheit 451

The suicide seen in this book was one serious topic that stood out to me. Suicide is not something that should be taken lightly, and it baffled me about how much it came up in Fahrenheit 451. There are five references to suicide in this book. Mildred, Montag’s wife tries to commit suicide alone in her room by taking too many pills (Bradbury pg. 10-11). Then when the medical technician’s come to drain her stomach, one says, “We get these cases nine or ten times a night. Got so many, starting a few years ago, we had this special machine built,” (Bradbury pg. 13). Later, while in the firehouse, a fellow fireman says to Montag, “Montag, a funny thing. Heard this morning. Fireman in Seattle, purposely set a Mechanical Hound to his own chemical complex and let it loose. What kind of suicide would you call that?” (Bradbury pg. 29). Then, while participating in a book burning, Montag witnesses a woman  lighting  herself, her home and books on fire, killing herself in the process (Bradbury pg. 37). After, Beatty comments, saying, “These fanatics always try suicide; the patterns familiar,” (Bradbury pg. 36) Why would there be so many suicides? And all three people who tried or succeeded in suicide were very different….and yet…they were the same.  One woman, Mildred, a TV- addicted-book-hating woman who secretly is unsatisfied with her life, the second, a fireman who used one of the fire departments most dangerous tools to kill himself, and the third, a passionate woman who couldn’t live without her books. All three people tried suicide because they were unhappy and deeply bothered by something in their life. But WHY? The repetition of suicide really stood out too me because this book was supposed to be about a world where books were eliminated so people could be “happy”. Beatty describes fireman as protectors, trying to make sure everyone is happy. Everyone ACTS sooo content….but are they really? Apparently not. The technician says that they get many cases of suicide attempts all the time, so much they had a special machine built just for that. The world Montag lives in is not a happy one. Entertainment, which is what the people live off of, is NOT enough to make someone happy with their life. It can’t satisfy. Socializing is nearly banned, and only people like Clarisse and her family find happiness, and even then they get punished and even KILLED for it. The constant references to suicide make Montag’s world look very bleak and dreary to me. I think that there is one thing that truly made these people want to kill themselves, though. I think they realized the truth. They realized, finally, that they WEREN’T satisfied with life, and they NEVER would be! The fireman, I’m sure, realized what he was actually doing and couldn’t stand killing people and burning their homes anymore, Mildred probably realized that living to watch TV was not a life she wanted, and the woman who burned herself knew that she couldn’t live in this world and get to do what actually made her HAPPY. Those people woke up from their dream state. Bradbury, uses the repetition of suicide to give readers the image that Montag’s world is a very corrupted one.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.