#3

After showing Mildred his secret collection of (about twenty) stolen books, Montag and his wife begin reading them-- or rather, Montag reads them and Mildred complains. Mildred is a fascinating character. But I'll discuss her later... continuing on with the synopsis, Montag desperately tries to reach out and grasp Mildred with his words, but she evades them easily, a slippery kind of human that disconnects as soon as something more substantial than the TV characters she calls her "family" is mentioned. 

Frustrated with these relics of knowledge that say so much but mean so little to him, he remembers the old man he met with once in the park, a former English professor. Montag retrieves his contact information and sets off to find this old man Faber. On the subway trip, Montag's senses are assaulted by commercialized and mass-produced sounds and words and thoughts and he panics, stumbling onto Faber's doorstep nigh hysterical. After gaining the old man's trust, Faber confides in Montag and shares with him the three-step secret to understanding:

1.) Acquiring quality information.

2.) Having the "leisure" to digest this information.

3.) Having the freedom to base future actions upon this learned information.

The section ends with Montag going about his fireman job with Faber's voice reading The Book of Job to him in a hidden earpiece. There exists major juxtaposition between this and Mildred's Seashell headphones, the ones that blare insect-like hums into her ears at night to send her to sleep.

Of course, whenever I analyze a work that features a small group of rebels working against the establishment, obvious comparisons bubble to the forefront of my mind almost automatically. Fight Club, 1984, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, etc. I've read it so much that rebellion seems commonality now, though the struggle in this particular novel seems infinitely more convoluted than any other I've had to think about. It's not just the government or the elite or the law working against the characters we empathize with--it's also the general population, it's also the millions of content ignorants. It's also the protagonist's wife. I am actually accumulating severe amounts of stress reading this novel because my mind tends to get sidetracked marveling at the sheer gravity of this conflict. It's so large and frightening. A war against intellect.

Re: "more on Mildred"; Millie's complacency is highly correlated with mid-twentieth-century gender roles. Her weak will agitates me and it's true that I find her character so frustrating, but it also forces me to reflect on the time period once again. The '50s feminist movement was essentially nonexistent. Conformity was fervent, agitators were shunned, and perhaps Millie's character represents this kind of forced submissiveness and perhaps Clarisse's questioning nature represents her foil. On a personal level, it's hard to read Mildred as merely a character in a novel instead of what I see her to be... that is, Bradbury's exaggerated criticism of the '50s housewife. Ugh. Where you at, Betty Friedan?