Throughout the novel, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Mildred Montag has been developed as

a flat character. Her conversations with Guy Montag as well as Guy’s observations show explicit
examples of how dull, uncaring, and materialistic she is.
In part one of the novel, the morning after Montag had just burned a woman with her books,
Montag asks Mildred where they had met:

“The first time we ever met, where was it, and when?”
“Why it was at-”
She stopped.
“I don’t know,” she said.
He was cold. “Can’t you remember?”
“It’s been so long.”
“Only ten years, that’s all, only ten!”
“Don’t get excited, I’m trying to think.” She laughed an odd little laugh that went up and up. “Funny,
how funny, not to remember where or when you met your husband’r wife.”

Mildred is completely void of intelligent thought. Not only can she not remember where she
met Montag she laughs about it, too. The situation is uninteresting and unimportant to her. When they
had met, and where, was a thing in the past. No need to remember, so why not forget? There is nothing
to her personality, just emptiness. “How do you get so empty?” Montag even wonders.
The day after this conversation Montag refuses to go to work because of his internal conflicts
with the fire department. Captain Beatty comes to help sort out his feelings and leaves a short while
after. Trying to be helpful, Mildred suggests Montag go for a drive in their car.

“The keys to the beetle are on the night table. I always like to drive fast when I feel that way. You get it
up around ninety-five and you feel wonderful. Sometimes I drive all night and come back and you don’t
even know it. It’s fun out in the country. You hit rabbits, sometimes you hit dogs. Go take the beetle.”

Apathetic to death, or even safety, Mildred encourages Montag to be destructive. By now, the
character Mildred has proven her lack of morality and ability to think. The mood becomes frustrating
as Montag tries to interact with Mildred. She is a very basic person in this dystopian world and is a
perfect example of how society has fallen.
In part two of the novel, Mildred betrays Montag by turning him in to the fire department for
keeping books. This is far more severe than Beatty’s betrayal, since she is, after all, his wife.

The front door opened; Mildred came down the steps, running, one suitcase held with a dreamlike
clenching rigidity in her fist, as a beetle-taxi hissed to the curb.
“Mildred!”
She ran past with her body stiff, her face floured with powder, her mouth gone, without lipstick.
“Mildred, you didn’t put in the alarm!”
She shoved the valise in the waiting beetle, climbed in, and sat mumbling, “Poor family, poor family,
oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now…”

Mildred is devoid of any sincere emotions. Her only attachment is to the “family” in the soap
opera she watches. By this point in the novel, it is quite obvious Mildred is only a shell of a human
being. Even in the end of the story Montag sees Mildred as an empty person, just as he did in the
beginning.

“My wife, my wife. Poor Millie, poor, poor Millie. I can’t remember anything. I think of her hands but I
don’t see them doing anything at all. They just hang there at her sides or they lay there on her lap or
there’s a cigarette in them, but that’s all.”

Although there were moments in the novel where the reader gained hope for Mildred’s
intelligence, in the end she was still the same: mundane, materialistic, and cold.