In Fahrenheit 451 Montag is cursed with the realization that what he’s been doing as a job for years is actually awful, and that books aren’t bad, and their absence is part of what’s causing people's lives to be empty, and meaningless. This realization is a curse because there is not much he can do about it, and no one understands. It is similar to the situation in Socrates cave allegory, in which prisoners are only shown shadows, and one day one goes out into the real world, and comes back unable to get the rest of them to understand what he's seen. Clearly there are many similarities between the situation of the prisoner, and of Montags. Both of them are unwillingly subjected to the truth about what’s going on. In Montag’s scenario Clarisse,