Technology played a major role in how the citizens within Montag’s society in Fahrenheit 451 interacted with each other and how they responded to certain situations. The same can be said for today’s society. Mildred and her friends’ relationships with their husbands and children, or lack, thereof, are key examples of the effect of technology on their correlations with others. Seashells and the “parlor walls” are also used to help the user forget about everything else around them, which is not too far from today’s reality. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury makes comments on how technology affects relationships with others, which in turn affects how well the society functions. Mildred’s use of her Seashells― little earplugs that play a continuous …show more content…
This lack of communication between the two affects how their relationship functions as a whole. Mildred shuts herself off from everyone, including the man she married. Later on in the novel, it is discovered that her friends are the same way. Because of the excessive use of her Seashells, Mildred leaves a negative impression on her husband. Montag imagines before he even walks into the bedroom, “And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind…. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyes, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea...” (Bradbury 10). From this quote, the reader can clearly see that Mildred has made a habit of sticking the Seashells in her ears to drain out all other noises. Because of this, Montag …show more content…
The walls work in conjunction with the Seashells: the earplugs ruin the relationship while the walls help keep the relationship disrupted. This can be seen again with Mildred and her friends Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles. Mildred likes to believe that the life-sized people on the parlor walls are her “family,” when in actuality, she is a part of a scripted television show. Her friends believe the same thing, as seen in the way they react about their corrupted relationships with their husbands and children, or lack of. Having a “family” with them all of the time replaces the need of appreciating an actual family. Bradbury writes, “‘...Be independent, we always said. He said, if I get killed off, you just go right ahead and don’t cry, but get married again, and don’t think of me.’ ‘That reminds me,’ said Mildred. ‘Did you see that Clara Dove five-minute romance last night in your wall? Well, it was all about this woman who―’” (91). The reader can effortlessly see from this quotation that the women cannot hold a conversation for more than a few minutes before turning it back over to the parlor walls. This affects how they react to each other, as well as to holding a normal conversation. The fake families on the parlor walls have altered their perception on an