Irony in Clarisse’s death

When I first read about Clarisse’s death, I thought on an irony in the book. It has to do with the fastness and slowness that people live in the city where Fahrenheit 451 takes place.

Those cars that drive so fast are from people that really don’t care about looking at the billboards, at the grass, at houses in the highway, anything. They just want to arrive early to where they are going, without caring about what may be happening around them. I interpreted this fact with the way these people are. They live very fast too, and don’t care about the details that make life worth it; they just watch TV and talk nonsense. I can also say that they don’t talk or care about important things, but that’s the government’s fault too…

Then we have Clarisse’s aunt, who drove slowly and because of that, he went on jail! If we think about it, it sounds nonsense; it’s the contrary to what we really think it has to be. Her aunt was the strange one, the one who did things as they should be done, and he suffers the consequences.

I compare all the people in the town with these fast cars, and Clarisse with her aunt’s slow car. It’s something familiar: Clarisse is not the ‘insane’, the ‘strange one’; all her family is the one which doesn’t fit in that society.

So, what I wanted to say is that there’s an irony in the girl’s death. She is the one who lives the everyday, who takes care of details, who thinks about every single thing; and she died. While the others, who live fast, don’t care about anything, just do everything quickly, are still alive. I get the impression that this death is unfair. The one who really enjoys life, lives as it should be lived, dies. I won’t say that it’s unfair because the good characters shouldn’t die, and the bad ones should, because that is in fairy tales. So, more than ‘unfair’, I believe that the author is trying to express this irony. The ones who live fast, doing everything quickly and want things to arrive earlier, are still alive. While the girl, who did everything with a previous thought and lived without hurry, can’t have the possibility to do that anymore.

I just thought about it while I was reading some days ago, and I wanted to share it with you.

Vale