Compare and Contrast essay

Fahrenheit 451 – Compare and Contrast

Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, had created a strong character named Clarisse McClellan, who greatly impacted the world in which she lived. This was a society bent on censoring every book in existence, because of the simple fact that the pages contained too much of the reality of life. In the book, Clarisse was particularized as an enchanting girl who opened the eyes of the company which she kept, namely a fireman known as Guy Montag, whom she became very close to. When the dramatization was produced in 1966, however, a few differences were present, especially in Clarisse’s relationships with Montag and other characters. Some events occurred in an unlike way between the two productions.
Quite a few things did tie together between the movie and the novel, including Clarisse’s personality. She had the same manner, her talk full of knowledge of everything around her. She had given everything and everyone a chance to understand her, but the world insisted on moving too fast to care about anything but staying two steps ahead of life. She succeeded in changing Montag from one of them to an individual, by asking him for the reason why society stubbornly stayed so ignorant and burned books, their only source of reality. He had no answer, other than, “It’s always been this way.” Clarisse kept him aware that despite what he said, he is very unhappy with the way everyone’s lives were going, and that depth of thought was mandatory in an otherwise shallow world. For her way of thinking, Clarisse was shunned by every person besides Montag, others with her ideas, and her uncle, who influenced her “anti-social” ways. Montag could not help but to think about her philosophies and he added on to all of them day by day.
But past this, the differences arise. In the book, Clarisse is only seventeen years old, but in the movie she approached Montag as a twenty year old woman, and their relationship changed somewhat. They met not on a dark street, but n a monorail they both rode after work. Her status had been changed from a high school student to a teacher.
She was familiar with other “rebels” including an old woman who commits suicide rather than parting with her books. Clarisse was not killed by a speeding car full of kids, but lived and was taken in by the book people. In the written version, Clarisse had no acquaintance with any of these people. This probably showed that she really was as important as the novel said she was, because to give that sort of emphasis on a character is harder in a movie than in a book.
There was a character in the novel named Faber, an old man who helped Montag see the purpose of books. In the movie, he was replaced by Clarisse for two reasons: she talked to Montag about all the things Faber would have said (because she needed to have a purpose for staying alive), and because all the main reasons that books were important Montag figured out himself throughout the duration of the movie.
Many similarities and differences can be pointed out between the film and the novel. Not all of them feature Clarisse, but they are just as important. They bring into light the ways of portraying the world of Fahrenheit 451.