Mildred, Montag’s wife, displays many classifiable traits of a person with mental disorders. For example, Mildred tries to kill herself early on in the book. She takes a whole bottle of sleeping pills at once, and the morning after refuses to talk to her husband about it. The book says, “”You took all the pills in your bottle last night.” [Montag] “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she [Mildred] said, surprised.” (17 Bradbury.) During the Fahrenheit 451 unit, we read a few articles on how watching too much TV can lead to sadness/ depression. In the novel, all Mildred ever seems to do is shut out the world and watch mind numbing television. Mildred isn’t just “extremely stupid”. In the book’s reality, she’s more in denial, and she doesn’t want to care or fix anything. She seems like someone who has given in to her depression. If you think about Mildred in the book, you can see she has a lot of things that could be symptoms of mental disorders. There’s a part in the book where she even talks about hitting rabbits and dogs with her car to feel better. If you look on WebMD at common symptoms of clinical depression, the list includes difficulty concentrating and remembering details, thoughts or attempts of suicide, trouble sleeping, feelings of emptiness, and violent thoughts or actions, like what Mildred did with hitting animals with her car. Mildred may come off as seeming like just an idiot, but it goes deeper than that. Mildred, and probably many of the other typical citizens, is most likely well aware of their terrible situation. But because of their disorder, they don’t, can’t, or are too afraid to do anything to help
Mildred, Montag’s wife, displays many classifiable traits of a person with mental disorders. For example, Mildred tries to kill herself early on in the book. She takes a whole bottle of sleeping pills at once, and the morning after refuses to talk to her husband about it. The book says, “”You took all the pills in your bottle last night.” [Montag] “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” she [Mildred] said, surprised.” (17 Bradbury.) During the Fahrenheit 451 unit, we read a few articles on how watching too much TV can lead to sadness/ depression. In the novel, all Mildred ever seems to do is shut out the world and watch mind numbing television. Mildred isn’t just “extremely stupid”. In the book’s reality, she’s more in denial, and she doesn’t want to care or fix anything. She seems like someone who has given in to her depression. If you think about Mildred in the book, you can see she has a lot of things that could be symptoms of mental disorders. There’s a part in the book where she even talks about hitting rabbits and dogs with her car to feel better. If you look on WebMD at common symptoms of clinical depression, the list includes difficulty concentrating and remembering details, thoughts or attempts of suicide, trouble sleeping, feelings of emptiness, and violent thoughts or actions, like what Mildred did with hitting animals with her car. Mildred may come off as seeming like just an idiot, but it goes deeper than that. Mildred, and probably many of the other typical citizens, is most likely well aware of their terrible situation. But because of their disorder, they don’t, can’t, or are too afraid to do anything to help