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Mildred pierce character analysis
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Through out the film, Mildred has shown that she is a mother that would do anything for her children, she is strong, and independent. Even though she comes from a middle class, she does everything in her power to provide for her two daughters, especially for the eldest daughter Veda. At first, I thought Mildred was femme fatal because of the first scene but turns out that Veda is femme fatal, based off her values and behaviors. Mildred is a very attractive woman, and had a lot of men liking her but not once did she gave them the wrong idea or go after their money. The only time she married someone that she did not love was Monty, her second husband, and that too was for Veda so she would come back home. What stands out to me about Mildred
First, Mildred is unfeeling when she didn’t care that a woman had burned herself to death. A quote from the story is “She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that.” Mildred is unfeeling because society has made her believe that if it doesn’t affect her it doesn’t matter.
Mildred is not just self-centered, she is also unfeeling. For example she forgot to tell Montag that clarisse had died, and didn’t seem fazed at all. She is also robotic. When captain Beatty came to talk to Montag, Montag had asked her to leave the room. She did angrily, but she still did as she was told.
Mildred and her society are pretty peculiar. In the story Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Mildred and her society are crazy and do things completely different. This society has made Mildred self-centered, robotic, and unfeeling.
First Mildred is self-centered because she doesn't care what happens to others. In this society books are dangerous because they make us think. This quote from the story mildred states “ what’s this? Asked Mildred, almost with delight. Montag heaved back against her arms. What’s this here?” This quote shows how Mildred wanted to get Montag in trouble. Mildred is hoping officer Beatty will look or hear what they are saying This shows how Mildred is only looking out for
First, Mildred could be described as unfeeling. She does not care and is emotionless to everything that happens no matter what it is. In the novel, a woman kills herself in front of Montag, and because of this he is upset. Mildred’s response to this included, “She’s nothing to me; she shouldn’t have books, it was her responsibility, she should have thought of that.” She does not care that her husband is upset, and she doesn’t feel sorry or sad that someone died. Based on Captain
Mildred is a stereotypical character who only knows what the government and other people tell her. "And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios
To begin with, Bradbury shows the importance of valuing your family by showing that Mildred has lack of communication due to the excess technology in her life. Bradbury is showing us the significance of prioritizing relationships. In the novel, Mildred, Montag’s wife lets technology control her life and she has no genuine relationships outside of her TV. In the book, Montag asks, “’Will you turn the parlour off?’ Mildred replies with, ‘That’s my family’” (Bradbury 31). This quote shows that the meaning of “family” has developed a com...
Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain, begins in pre-Depression California, and ends during World War II times, also in California. The main character, Mildred Pierce, is a very attractive housewife of 29, raising two daughters, Ray and Veda. Although Mildred loves both her daughters, Veda is a particular obsession with Mildred. She constantly slaves away throughout the novel to do whatever she can to make Veda happy, despite the constant abuse and deception Veda inflicts upon Mildred. After a divorce from her first husband, Bert, in the opening pages of the novel, Mildred is forced to sacrifice her pride and become a waitress in order to support her family. If Veda were ever to find out, she would be appalled; a constantly recurring theme throughout this story is Veda’s pride and arrogance, and her condemnation of jobs she deems to be menial. Mildred’s main goal is to nurture Veda’s musical talents, and manages to pay for expensive music lessons from her meager salaries as a waitress and pie baker. However, Mildred’s luck is soon to change, as she takes up with an attorney and former partner of Bert, Wally. Mildred is able to use Wally’s business and real estate savvy to build a restaurant out of a deserted model home, and from there create a thriving chain of three food businesses. After becoming bored with Wally, however, Mildred craves a relationship with another man, a prestigious local man named Monty. Veda highly approves of her mother’s choice, as this makes her feel as if she too were more prestigious and affluent, despite having misgivings about her mother still being so low as to have an average, pedestrian job. All seems to be going well; even through Veda’s constant demands and tantrums, she still gets everything she wants, and Mildred and Monty are happy. Monty, however, falls on hard times with the coming of the Great Depression, and he constantly mooches off of Mildred’s affluence, making it a struggle for Mildred to cater to Veda’s every whim. Mildred soon dumps Monty to focus on making Veda a musical prodigy; this fails, however, when Veda is told that her piano is not up to par from a local famous music teacher. After Veda recovers from this shock, she explores the opportunities offered by an acting career, and begins to spin more webs of deception and selfishness. After Veda forces money out of a local rich family, lying and claiming their son got her pregnant, Mildred and Veda have a major argument, and Veda disowns her mother.
She does not express her views of the world since she spends her days watching and “communicating” with the parlor walls. Because of this, she is very forgetful of personal events and careless of others. Bradbury 40, Montag thinks back to when he and Mildred first met. “The first time we met, where was it and when?” “Why it was at-” She stopped. “I don't know,” she said. Also in Bradbury 49, Mildred states, “..let me alone. I didn't do anything,” as Montag shares his book conflict. This shows how Mildred lacks in thinking and considering the feelings of others. Therefore, she is the opposing side of the theme of the
Mildred depicts a conventional 1950s woman in the aspect of being completely naive and oversimplified as a character. According to ‘Essential
The poetry of Phillis Wheatley is crafted in such a manner that she is able to create a specific aim for each poem, and achieve that aim by manipulating her position as the speaker. As a slave, she was cautious to cross any lines with her proclamations, but was able to get her point across by humbling her own position. In religious or elegiac matters, however, she seemed to consider herself to be an authority. Two of her poems, the panegyric “To MAECENAS” and the elegy “On the Death of a young Lady of Five Years of Age,” display Wheatley’s general consistency in form, but also her intelligence, versatility, and ability to adapt her position in order to achieve her goals.
Of all characters, Bradbury uses Mildred Montag to effectively portray the idea that the majority of society has taken happiness as a refuge in nothing but passive, addictive entertainment. She immediately reveals her character early in the book, by saying, “My family is people. They tell me things: I laugh. They laugh! And the colors!” (73). Mildred is describing her parlors, or gigantic wall televisions, in this quote. Visual technological entertainment is so important in her life that she refers them to as “family,” implying the television characters as her loved ones. By immersing herself in an imaginary world, Mildred finds herself able to relate to fake characters and plots, giving her a phony sense of security. This is necessary for her to achieve her shallow happiness, or senseless plain fun, as she lifelessly watches other people in her walls with a senseless mind. Her family in real life only consists of Guy Montag, her husband, whom she has no fond feelings about. Montag is so frustrated with Mildred because of her inability to express feelings for ...
Is Mildred selling herself to the people in her life in order to maintain the life she has created for herself and Veda? She is constantly working and making money for her family but she gets no fulfilment out of it. Towards the end of the film, Mildred is back with Bert and is contempt to go back to the lifestyle she once lived, but that her daughter Veda despises. Does Mildred feel self-accomplished or does she feel powerless? “Mildred walks out of the police station into the morning sunshine with the man who was her first husband and the father of her children. However, since he was an unreliable breadwinner and she had to go to work baking pies to support the family in the first place, one might wonder just how happy this ending is supposed to seem” (Basinger,
While reading Mildred Pierce, I was reminded of my own mother’s relationship with her daughters. One of my sisters, Leslie, in particular, hated my mother in youth. It was strong emotion to extinguish, especially in those formative teen years, but because life is dominated with experiences, things in which we learn from, later one comes to understand the nature of their hate and love and begins to properly delineate the truth of each. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see this in Mildred Pierce and Veda’s relationship.
. “’Will you turn the parlor off’ he asked. ‘That is my family.’” (Bradbury 46). In this part of the book, Mildred is captivated by the parlor walls to the point where she doesn’t want to turn it off. She thinks of the parlor as her family. Earlier in this same chapter, she even asks her husband, Montag, for a fourth wall for the parlor. Her “family” is all Mildred talks about in the book and it makes me think how involved TVs have become in our daily lives.