One important reason why Clarisse touches Montag so profoundly is because she reminds him of a long ago day when the world opened up to him and reality was not so harsh. From the moment he meets her he says he feels as though her fact reminds him of something from his past that was important to him. The light he can see in her face reminds him of something that was very profound to him when he was just a child. He recognizes that the light she has in herself is a certain type of light that is not like electricity but more like a soft candle's glow.
The light he sees in her makes him remember that when he was a child one day the power went out in his house where he lived with his mother. His mother found the two of them a candle and for an hour they enjoyed the light of that candle which made the world glow in a different sort of way. By the soft light of the candle that was somehow gently flattering and not as harsh as the light of electricity, he found a new way to look at the world. For one brief moment while he and his mother were together without the power off, they shared something important and profound. They found a way to discover the world anew without the harshness of the world to stop the wonderment of the things he found in it. The world no longer felt so large and overpowering, but it felt as though it were small enough that he could take it on with his mother. He was able to look at the world from an optimistic view and stop seeing it as overpowering and too much to handle.
This important way of seeing the world with new eyes was something that Clarisse brought back to him in that one moment. Although he did not realize it at the time, it foreshadowed the way she too was going to make him able to see the world in a new and wonderful light that he had not seen for a very long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment