Farewell Clarisse: The Importance of One Persons Death

In the reality of life, most people dont realize the value of what they have until it is gone.
This concept applies to the novel Fahrenheit 451, written by Ray Bradbury. Guy Montag is a
fireman who starts fires rather than putting them out in a futuristic American city. Montags eyes
are clearly opened to the emptiness and unhappiness in his life when he encounters a gentle
seventeen-year-old girl named Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse innocently asks Montag penetrating
questions with her unusual love of people and nature. These questions will soon change
Montags life dramatically. Montag doesnt realize how important Clarisse is to his life and the
world until she is killed in an automobile accident.
The citizens in this futuristic American city do not enjoy nature, think independently, or
have real meaningful conversations with one another. In fact, they do the total opposite. The
people deliberately drive fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets, and listen
to radios attached to their ears.
Censorship, which is the suppressing of unacceptable parts of knowledge, occurs way too
much in the novel. Books are banned and burned, though there is not a clear reason why. The
novel suggests that a bunch of factors as a whole combined to end in this result. The citizens end
up not having any opinions or feelings. The government didnt want to offend anybody, so they
started burning the source of knowledge, which are books. Even the messages on television sets

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became very blunt as to not hurt anybodys feelings. Censorship also occurred when the
government took children at a very young age to drill ideas into their innocent minds. With
everybody feeling and thinking the same way, the government had total control over every
aspect of every persons life. People cannot feel happiness or satisfaction without first being hurt.
Since nobody gets offended in this new world, no one feels hatred or hurt. Since nobody feels
hatred or hurt, most people dont have true happiness.
Clarisse McClellan is definitely an odd duck by this new worlds standards. She is the
total opposite of the regular people in the novel, but she symbolizes what most people act like in
our world today. Clarisse is outgoing, naturally cheerful, and unusually intuitive. She is not
popular among her friends or teachers, and she often gets ridiculed for asking why instead of
how. She loves nature rather than technology, and because she does not agree with what the
school system teaches, she often skips class. Clarisse is interested in parts of the world most
people dont even understand. Each character in the story is included to serve a purpose to either
move the story line further along, or to act as an antagonist to Guy Montag. Clarisse serves many
purposes in the novel, and may have one of the most important roles in the story.
Clarisse represents imagination in a world destroyed by lack of knowledge. She
represents innocence in a society based on blind acceptance of policies and constant searches for
gratification. She stops to smell the roses, one might say. She also serves as an antithesis to
Montags wife, Mildred. Clarisse and her family represent what Montags society could and
should be. They talk to each other and are not alienated like the rest of society. Clarisse is one
individual who is actually in touch with her own soul, and is able to look at the world honestly in
order to see what it is worth.

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Montag is changed completely by Clarisse because she is his inspiration. She asks him
questions about his job that no one else in his position would ever answer or be willing to
answer. Clarisse isnt actually trying to teach Montag, but she is trying to learn from him.
Clarisse never actually tells Montag what to think. She simply shows him that thinking is a great
thing and that thinking is and option. Clarisse invites Montag into the world she lives in, and
Montag walks through the door she opens for him. Montag is torn between his feelings for
Clarisse. He admires her curiosity and awareness of the world, but is also disturbed by her exact
knowledge of his emptiness and loveless life. A girl like Clarisse cant just live. In fact, she is
not allowed to live. Clarisse had to die to keep the novel moving forward.
Just as Montag and Clarisse are beginning to form a real friendship, Clarisse disappears.
The book never fully explains what happened to Clarisse. Montags wife, Mildred, suggests that
the whole family moved out of the neighborhood and that Clarisse was run over by one of the
crazy speeding cars. Three things could have happened for the story to move forward. Clarisse
could have run away, been taken away by the government, or killed. Ray Bradbury decided to
take Clarisse down the death route.
The importance of Clarisses death is three-fold. Clarisse had to die because she was all
that remained of what we readers understand as good. Since this is a dystopian novel, the society
needs to be completely dysfunctional. Her death emphasized all that was wrong with Montags
inhumanity of society. The readers have to see the one last piece of goodness and truth
destroyed. Clarisses death also gives rise to the motives of Montag. The death of Clarisse
caused Montag to rethink his life and the society he lives in. Montag would have the decision of
liberating the society or removing himself from the society. Finally, Clarisse was a potential love

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interest for Montag. If she continued to exist, the story may have become a romance instead of a
science-fiction. Montag eventually made society think about the fact that technology and the
absence of knowledge can destroy us unless we are careful.
Clarisses role in this novel is completed by Faber and Granger. Faber is alike to Clarisse
in that he believes the same things she does. Faber also opened Montags mind, continuing
Clarisses path for Montag. We even see Clarisse when Granger discussed the thumbprint on his
mind left by his grandfather. Clarisse left a similar thumbprint on Montags mind. Clarisses
death also foreshadows the close to death event experienced by Montag when he almost got hit
by a car, possibly the same car responsible for Clarisses death. Every person in the world can
follow Clarisses innocent and individual personality. She stood up for what she believed in, as
everyone should. Even after her death, Clarisse existed because she changed Montags mind,
where someone like Mildred hardly existed at all.









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