Fahrenheit 451: Clarisse and Montag

Clarisse and Montag have a very short lasting friendship due to her young disappearance/death, but I think she is one of the most important characters in the entire novel. She is the very first character Montag meets, and she seems to have a huge impression on him from the second he meets her because she is so different from other people he has met. In fact, she is so different  she first makes him uncomfortable and he even says to her, “You think too many things,” (Bradbury pg. 6).But  she also comforts him, her face reminds him of a memory he had with his mother, a comforting candle light (Bradbury pg.5). She describes to him her life, her family, and even admits she’s been thought insane. It’s easy to tell that she is very different from the rest of the people Montag has met in his life. She asks him questions and tells him random things, never stopping to think before she speaks. She is free spirited and makes Montag feel relaxed and at ease. But it is one thing that she says that I believe changes the whole course of the book, and the course of Montag’s life. She asks Montag a simple question:  “Are you happy?” (Bradbury pg.7). Montag quickly answers with, “Am I what?” (Bradbury pg.7). He is completely baffled.  But it is this one question that Montag can’t get out of his head. It is this question that makes him realize he is not happy at all. “He wore his happiness like  a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back,” (Bradbury pg. 9). Montag begins wondering how he could be happy, and why he is not. It is this soul searching that leads him to finding the truth of life, which he believes is held in books. During his next talk with Clarisse, she shows him a dandelion, saying that he’s in love if it rubs off. It doesn’t. This fact bothers Montag greatly. (Bradbury pg.19) She then asks him why he’s a fireman, and points out how he’s different from all the rest (Bradbury pg. 21). “He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the other two halves grinding one upon the other,” (Bradbury pg. 21). At the final meeting he has with Clarisse, she describes to him the world they live in how she sees it. She talks about how corrupted the world really is and how no one appreciates anything anymore.  She’s excluded from the rest, and she claims that “People don’t talk about anything” (Bradbury pg 28). The point is, after reading this book, I realized that Clarisse had a very significant influence on Montag.  When she asked him if he was happy, she made him realize he WASN’T and that he was unaware of it the whole time.  With the dandelion, she made him become aware that the relationship he had with his wife was not a good and healthy one, and that he was faking himself. He pretended like everything with Mildred was fine, but it wasn’t.  Her comment about him not being like the other fireman opens his eyes to the job that he’s been doing his whole life! He finally realizes it’s not what he saw it as before! And finally, as the story progresses, he sees the society as Clarisse sees it, and notices how “People don’t talk about anything” when Mildred’s friends come over (Bradbury pg. 89-98), and it infuriates him. Clarisse opens his eyes. She made him come out of the fog he was living in, and this makes Montag more free. All of these realizations that Montag has because of what Clarisse said leads him on his journey to finding the truth and books.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967. Print.