Montag's Motivation In Fahrenheit 451

Prior to meeting Clarisse, his neighbor who is sixteen years old, Montag is essentially a robot that burns books. He goes to work, deals with his suicidal wife, and goes about his television-obsessed day without much thought. Montag is jolted out of his trance by Clarisse, who makes him look around and motivates him to take bold and violent actions. Clarisse McClellen is one of the most important characters in the novel of Fahrenheit 451, without her there would be no spark that inspired the flame of rebellion. Clarisse represents all things considered unnatural in the so called natural world, she is all things sensory and feeling. She allows herself to feel emotion and apathy. “But Clarisse’s favorite subject wasn’t herself. It was everyone

“...She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why.That can be embarrassing. You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s better off dead” (Bradbury, 60). After not seeing Clarisse for a few days, Montag asks Captain Beatty what happened to her. Clarisse's family had been closely monitored since they were seen as "odd ducks," according to Beatty. Clarisse's need to understand why things were the way they were concerned Beatty the most. Montag finally lit the matches, there is no greater threat to the status quo in the society of Fahrenheit 451. Similar to how Clarisse's questions helped Montag come to terms with himself, her death motivates Montag to take action and strengthens his conviction that books might hold the key to preventing society's inevitable self-destruction. “Her death in the novel confirms that something is seriously wrong with the City. At the end of the novel, when Montag walks on the railroad tracks which lead to the colony of book people, he senses that Clarisse had been there before him. Thus he realizes that though Clarisse is dead, she was his guide all along.” (House). Clarisse is a hazard due to her curiosity, this was the true reason for her death. The political power knew how dangerous she was, they saw the flame she was nurturing in Montag and sought to snuff it out. Her death did just the opposite though, Clarisses mortality was the gasoline to a fire already burning. “It was his relationship with Clarisse that was for Guy the first "drop"; she started his questioning of the status quo, and subsequent events after her death made Guy think and question more and more seriously, until he completely breaks away from his diseased society at the end of the novel.” (Sisarios). In a society that is hostile to honesty, Montag developed a genuine emotional