Is suicide justifiable?
Do you think you would end your life just to escape a world which you dont believe in? Now this it may seem a little extreme to some, but to those in Bradburys Fahrenheit 451 view it as an escape from the lies and greed that controls their world. The reason for such extreme actions to take place is because of society which on the outside seems like a perfect utopia but on the inside of this society we find a monotonous, uneducated, "dead" state of existence, which promotes depression.
In this "perfect" society suicide is much much more common than it is in our world. We get these cases nine or ten a night. Bot so many, starting a few years ago, we ha the special machines built. (Bradbury 15). If these workers really do get nine or ten cases a night, that means 3,650 people at least attempt suicide each year. Reviving these victims of society, such as Mildred, is nothing new, odd, or extreme to these workers its just part of there everyday job. Mildreds reasons for wanting the tender kiss of death are ordinary in this environment. For once in her life she finally felt the pain that society tried to hide under a thick blanket woven of lies. She would never know such a feeling again because part of the workers jobs is to rewrite the memories of the dead so they have no recolection of these sad events. Maybe, she hadnt conciously realised what she uncovered but subconciously, eating away at her slowly until the only thing she could think to do was to end her life and escape this world.
The woman on the porch reached out with contempt to them all and struck the kitchen railing. (Bradbury 40). What motivates a person to want to die for a cause? Is it the belief that a world without thinking, reading, or truly living, will lead to the total destruction of human kind? Or is it simply a mental or emotional connection to an object, in this case books, that drove this woman to die for them because she simply couldnt live without? I believe that she was driven to this action because she did love her books, but not just the books but because in the books lay the keys to life, love, and knowledge. I believe she couldnt bear to live in a world where there was no one who thought for themselves.
Everyone thinks for themselves and no two truly think alike. For this reason it is hard to tell which of the two suicides, if either, is justified. Is it more acceptable that someone was in a comatose sort of state not realizing that they kept taking more and more pills? Or is it more acceptable that a woman killed herself for something she believed in more than life? Either way you decide in each of the two womans minds, whether they consciously or subconsciously knew it, suicide was certainly a justified action to take.
Works Cited
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982.
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