Clarisse in Fahrenheit 451

In the early pages of Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag meets a seventeen year old girl named Clarisse McClellan. This early encounter between Guy and Clarisse basically begins the main plot of the story. Clarisse quickly becomes unique to Montag not only because of her strange habits of hiking and playing with flowers but also because of the questions she asks Guy about life and the interesting topics she brings up about the world before it turned to madness. Another strange characteristic that Montag notices about Clarisse is that even though she says that she does not attend school, she seems much more wise than anyone Montag knows. In their conversations Clarisse mentions her uncle a lot and how she learned a many things about the former world from him which causes Montag to begin wondering how their futuristic society came to be so twisted. As they talk more and begin to see each other everyday, finds that he actually seems to like Clarisse or he has a need to see her that is greater than the need to see or spend time with his own wife, Mildred. Eventually, Guy stops seeing Clarisse because he does not see her walking by his house again in the morning anymore. When mentioning Clarisse in a conversation with his wife Mildred, Guy finds out that Clarisse has "gone away." Later in the story, Captain Beatty tells Montag that Clarisse was killed in a car accident. I find the character of Clarisse McClellan very interesting. I find it interesting how Bradbury includes her character in the story because she is not one of the main characters in the story, yet I think she played the most important part in the book Fahrenheit 451 because of the way she begins the plot to the whole story. Without her, Montag would have never had thoughts about the society before his time and how the job of a fireman came to be. More importantly, without Clarisse, Montag would never have tried to save the books and save the society.