Clarisse values family, unlike the other members of her society.
In Montag’s world, people do not get close to one another. Everything is about shallow pleasure and entertainment. This is why people spend all of their time watching television, drive too fast, and never talk to each other. They have eliminated literature so that no one has to think or feel.
Clarisse is different. She is Montag’s teenage neighbor. Even though he is a fireman and most people fear them, Clarisse decides to stop Montag one day and strike up a conversation with him. He finds her fascinating. She and her family have very different views on life.
Clarisse talks about her uncle a lot. He seems to be the inspiration for her reflective behavior.
"If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he'd say, that's grass! A pink blur? That's a rose-garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles an hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn't that funny, and sad, too?" (Part One)
Clarisse and her family are considered renegades. Clarisse tells Montag she rarely watches television. Her family sits around talking. Clarisse gives several examples of times her uncle was jailed, including for being a pedestrian. Apparently doing anything slowly is suspicious behavior.
When Clarisse is killed, Captain Beatty tells Montag that she is better off that way because her whole family is strange.
We've a record on her family. We've watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can't rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years. The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school. (Part One)
The relationship that Montag has with Mildred is more typical. They barely talk, and he spends most of his time worrying that she is going to kill herself. There is no intimacy or deep connection there. Mildred cares more about the TV family than her own. Clarisse is the one person that cares about her actual living family instead.
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