“Sample”
Critical Passage Analysis
Mr. Jones
Novel: Fahrenheit 451
Passage: The Introduction of Clarisse McClellan (Pg. 8 – 14).
I have been captivated by Clarisse McClellan since I first met her twenty-five
years ago in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. I have always found her to be a myterious
character, sort of a trickster who stirs up trouble for a purpose, and I can only imagine her
as ethereal and beautiful. After completing the novel and going back to reexamine
Bradbury’s characterization of Clarisse and his use of the archetypal ‘hero’s journey,’ it
is clear that Clarisse is the catalytic character who summons the novel’s hero, Montag,
and starts him on his journey.
It was Bradbury’s characterization of Clarisse that first led me to consider her as
part of the ‘hero’s journey.’ The imagery and tone Bradbury uses to describe Clarisse’s
entrance into the novel suggests that something mysterious and mythical is happening in
the novel, that a deeper, older, and therefore, wiser story is being told. Her presence is
announced with a rustling of wind that causes the novel’s hero to feel “as if someone had
called his name (Pg. 8). The suddenly, she enters the novel like a goddess on wind and
leaves that “carry her forward” (Pg. 9). Her face is “slender and milk white” (Pg. 9), with
dark brown eyes “so fixed to the world that no move escaped them” (Pg. 9). And, when
she meets the novel’s hero, she challenges his ‘status quo’ and makes him feel as if she is
“turning him end for end, shaking him quietly, and emptying his pockets, without once
moving herself” (Pg. 10). Her conversations with the novel’s hero further develop her as
an “odd one” (Pg. 12). Through her conversation with Montag, Clarisse reveals that she
is an outsider who thinks differently and of “too many things” (Pg. 13), that she does not
enjoy driving fast or any of the typical teenage activities. Rather, she enjoys time on the
porch with her family. She enjoys learning about the “dew on the grass” (Pg. 13) or “the
man in the moon” (Pg. 13), and she enjoys asking probing questions that cause the hero
to be unable to “remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable”
(Pg.13). Basically, she is “seventeen and insane” (Pg. 11). And, one night, she asks
Montag an insane, probing question that causes him to take a close look at his life; “are
you happy?” (Pg.14). Then, she is “gone – running in the moonlight” (Pg. 14). Although
Clarisse disappears early in the novel, she completes her purpose. Her probing question
ignites a conflict within the hero that will awaken his desire to pursue his goals at all cost.
Of course, Montag will still will have to pass through many stages. He will need
face and defeat a threshold guardian and pass through many trials before completing his
heroic journey. But, it is Clarisse and her archetypal ‘call to adventure’ that start Montag
on his journey.