In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Montag enters his home after his first meeting with Clarisse. He stares at the blank wall, but in his memory,...

After meeting Clarisse in the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, Montag goes home and looks at a blank wall. However, the memory of Clarisse is so fresh in his memory that he can picture her perfectly. The following extended simile illustrates this:

She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night when you waken to see the time and see...

After meeting Clarisse in the beginning of Fahrenheit 451, Montag goes home and looks at a blank wall. However, the memory of Clarisse is so fresh in his memory that he can picture her perfectly. The following extended simile illustrates this:

She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of the night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it has to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun. (8)

This description is profound because it is thorough and accessible; most people can imagine what he's describing and picture it clearly in their mind's eye. The fact that he compares her face to a clock at night and muses about the clarity of moving towards a new sun (or starting a new day) suggests that Clarisse excites a part of Montag that has been dead or unexplored for a long time.

Montag further compares her face to a mirror because he feels that she understands him, and this is a rare feeling: "How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?" (8). He senses that she has an "incredible power of identification," and wonders if his eyelid itched if hers would blink. Their meeting seems meant to be for Montag.