The Role of Clarisse

Clarisse was an outgoing, naturally cheerful, and unusually intuitive girl.

She seemed to be weird but simple at her first presentation; she was standing at the same place, and waiting for Montag without reason. She is unpopular among her mates and disliked by teachers for asking "why" and focusing on nature rather than on technology, and she always skipped the school since she felt it was useless and was a repetition. She influenced Montag a lot in the story. She was Montag's inspiration. She was responsible for Montag's change and she also made him realize that he wasn't happy. It was her simplicity and expression of her thought which led Montag to question his own static life.

Clarisse represented the innocent and the consciousness that did not corrupted by the government in Fahrenheit 451. Clarisse did not accept the values that society set for her, and hardly took part in activities. She also represented everything that Montag wished to become. She played an essential character in Fahrenheit 451. If it were not for Clarisse, the story would be tedious.

Fahrenheit 451

“Mr. Montag you are looking at a coward … yelling with me, by then. Now, it’s too late.”

I felt Faber was a pity person when I reached this part in Fahrenheit 451. Faber was a devotee of the ideas contained in books.  He was quivered on the brink of rebellion. “I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally they set the structure to burn books, using the fireman, I grunted a few times and subsided. ” In this part, Faber’s words made me feel that Ferber blamed the fault on himself.  He had spent years regretting that he did not defend books when he saw the moves to ban them. He might think that if he had spoken out, book burning might have not been existed. Actually, Faber had nothing to do with the book burning. Even if Faber had spoken put, the government still would made this happen. I believed that there did have some people spoken out at that time, but it didn’t help the condition. Rebellious people’s power could not compare with the government’s power. I can see that he was desperate for books, and he loved reading. However, Reality is always cruel.

Fahrenheit 451

     The author of the Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, was lived in the McCarthy era that thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or spies of Soviet and questioned  by the other. The majority of the accused were government employees, people who were in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Though the accusers did not have the evidences, lots of people still suffered from the conviction just like the last story we read(the Crucible).Government also suppressed people thinking through book banning. Feeling bitter about the workings that government had done, Ray Bradbury was inspired to write  "The Pedestrian", a short story which would become "The Fireman" and then Fahrenheit 451.

    Ray Bradbury concerned about the censorship in America, and he worried about the future of America . Bradbury said these during a radio interview in 1956: "I wrote this book at a time when I was worried about the way things were going in this country four years ago. Too many people were afraid of their shadows; there was a threat of book burning. Many of the books were being taken off the shelves at that time. And of course, things have changed a lot in four years. Things are going back in a very healthy direction. But at the time I wanted to do some sort of story where I could comment on what would happen to a country if we let ourselves go too far in this direction, where then all thinking stops, and the dragon swallows his tail, and we sort of vanish into a limbo and we destroy ourselves by this sort of action." Ray Bradbury mentioned that he was trying to describe the events would happen in 40 or 50 years.  I think his vision of the modern society is right. What Ray Bradbury said in the interview could connect to some of the country nowadays. For example, China restricts their citizens using Facebook,Line and Youtube,etc. Government afraid that people would spread the ideas through these social websites or applications, moreover organize an ally and revolt the country. Regardless of the past or the present, government always restrict people by many different ways.