Addicted to the labor-saving machines that toast and butter her bread and fill her mind with simplistic entertainment, she forgets to bring aspirin to her ailing husband and recedes into monosyllabic communication. Her replies to him are impersonal and callous, as illustrated by her bland announcement of Clarisse’s death. To remove any doubts about her materialistic, robotic lifestyle, Mildred surrounds herself with friends like Clara Phelps and Ann Bowles, vapid and witless dullards who select a presidential candidate by his televised good looks. Unsurprisingly, Mildred betrays her husband and flees their marriage while mourning the loss of her TV family. Her white-powdered face, her colorless lips, and her stiff body foreshadow the corpse she soon becomes. The oppression and militarism that she so willingly accepts expectedly turns on her and exterminates her in a single apocalyptic blast.