Mildred, in Fahrenheit 451, is
trapped in conformity. She is a product of her
society.
She is a product of mindless entertainment and a
system designed to keep people from thinking for themselves. She watches TV on three
walls and can't stop thinking about the day when she'll get a fourth wall. The
programming is so simplistic and unenlightening that a ten-year-old child would get
bored with it, but Mildred watches it faithfully. She conforms to society by being
engrossed with its mindless programming.
Mildred also
conforms concerning the issue of books. She is the one who informs on her husband
because he is too nonconforming--he reads books. Importantly, she gives little effort
to understanding any of the words in the books Montag tries to interest her in. This,
too, is conformity.
Her conformity is also apparent in the
horror she feels when Montag reads a poem (nonconformity) to her friends. She is
threatened by anything that her society doesn't
sanction.
Perhaps the only nonconformist act on Mildred's
part, in fact, is her attempted suicide. This, apparently--since the technicians are so
nonchalant about pumping out her stomach--is what conformity in her society often leads
to.
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