On page 10, when Clarisse asks Montag “Are you happy?” it makes him begin to wonder, is he happy? In order to truly understand this maybe we need to know what is happiness? According to dictionary.com, the definition of happy is “characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy”. Their society looks for this contentment in materialistic things. There are numerous thing that they use to try to find this contentment including the parlor. They use their parlors as a means of instantaneous contentment. Their “parlor families” allow as a means of keeping them distracted and content at anytime. The seashells do this same job as the parlors as a means of distraction. The seashells constantly allow for sound to be transmitted into the
