CLARISSE: "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lamppost, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?"
Mr.MONTAG: "You sound so very old."
CLARISSE: Sometimes I'm ancient. I'm afraid of children my own age. They kill each other. Did it always use to be that way? My uncle says no. Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I'm afraid of them and they don't like me because I'm afraid. My uncle says his grandfather remembered when children didn't kill each other. But that was a long time ago when they had things different. They believed in responsibility, my uncle says. Do you know, I'm responsible. I was spanked when I needed it, years ago. And I do all the shopping and housecleaning by hand. "But most of all," she said, "I like to watch people. Sometimes I ride the subways all day and look at them and listen to them. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy. Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains and do you know what?
Mr.MONTAG: "What?"
CLARISSE: "People don't talk about anything."
Mr.MONTAG: "Oh, they must!"
CLARISSE: "No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same thing and nobody says anything different from anyone else. And most of the time in the caves they have the joke boxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the colored patterns running up and down, but it's only color and all abstract. And at the museums, have you ever been?" All abstract. That's all there is now. My uncle says it was different once. A long time back sometimes picture said things or even showed people" (Bradbury 1991, pg. 29-31).

Clarisse, a character in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (first published in October 1953), puts forth two questions to the reader: first, the obvious one, 'what does it mean to be social?' and, second, the not so obvious one, 'what is it that shapes society?' In Clarisse's society, she is classified as antisocial because she strives for and engages in social interaction that is not one-dimensional. In other words, she seeks relationships that are productive and not destructive. She yearns for discourse and detests conversations concerning fast cars, sports teams, the latest fashion trends, the coolest vacation spots, and other topics of popular discussion or what I have come to call 'A.B.C. social mental bubble gum.' In Clarisse's society, the social structure is founded on impersonal social interaction, the possession of a book is a crime that will get your house burned down by the fire department, takings one's life is so common that there are EMT teams that only deal with suicide, and one's TV family is more important that one's real family or social peer group. In this brief passage, Bradbury forces his readers not only to examine 'what it means to be social?' and 'what is it that shapes society?' but also what these questions mean to the reader's great grandchildren, whether they are alive or yet to be born. Like Bradbury, sociologists understand that individuals, thru social action (or lack of action), create and/or perpetuate the social structures and social forces that not only shape their world but also the worlds of their family, friends, and their future grandchildren. With this in mind, let us begin with a study of social interaction, the forces they create, and the structures they maintain.