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.
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