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Plot Summary The time is the near future, and the place is an unnamed typical American city. Guy Montag, a thirty-year-old "fireman," is a model citizen of his community: he takes pleasure in his work, he earns a good salary, and he lives with Mildred -- his wife of ten years -- in a suburban house, with all the latest appliances and wall-sized TVs. But in this world, "firemen" don't fight fires -- they start them. Books and reading are banned, and the firemen's job is to burn down houses containing books... sometimes burning down the person inside, too. Montag has always thought he was happy in his work, in love with his wife, and generally satisfied with life. But things start to happen which force him to question his perception of his world and himself. He meets a neighbour, seventeen-year-old Clarisse McClellan, who asks Montag profound questions about history, nature, and his own feelings. He discovers his wife, Mildred, attempting to kill herself -- but after he calls the paramedics to pump out her stomach, she refuses to acknowledge or talk about her overdose, instead returning to a life spent watching her full-wall TVs. And he starts to see the anomalies in his society which no one talks about: the way everyone watches TV instead of talking, the way the world moves so fast that people have no time to think and are always dying in car crashes, and the way his country is silently inching closer to war. Montag finds that he is no longer happy. His boss at work, Fire Captain Beatty, teases Montag about his new squeamishness. Meanwhile, the Mechanical Hound -- a horrible hunting robot in the shape of a dog which helps the firemen hunt down book owners -- seems to become strangely hostile toward Montag. When the firemen respond to a fire alarm, and end up burning down a houseful of books with the woman who owns them still inside, Montag finds himself sickened and shaken. This sensation is heightened when he learns that Clarisse is dead, killed by a car. Montag, half unconsciously, stole a book from the house just before burning it-- and we learn that he's been stealing books from burning houses for the past year. At home, he reveals his hidden pile of books to the horrified Mildred, and insists that she help him try to make sense of them. Montag also remembers meeting an old man named Faber in a park the year before: Faber, a former English professor, quoted poetry to Montag, and Montag decides to make contact with him. After much trouble, he convinces the passionate but frightened old man to join him in a scheme to destroy the firemen's network from inside, by planting forbidden books in their own firehouses and then calling in reports. He also gives Faber a rare Bible he's stolen, to be saved and reprinted in the underground printing network, and promises to give him money to help. Faber, in turn, gives Montag an electronic invention of his own: a tiny earplug that fits in Montag's ear like a "green bullet," through which Montag can hear Faber's voice and Faber can hear everything said to Montag. Faber, who is now "with" Montag all the time, begins to tutor him in literature, history and philosophy. But when Mildred has invites two of her superficial friends over to watch television, Montag -- enraged by their smug attitude -- recklessly pulls out a book and reads them an ancient poem. The women leave angrily, and Mildred flees in tears. When Montag goes off to work, Fire Captain Beatty, apparently amused by Montag's recent self-doubts -- which he says are perfectly normal for many firemen -- gives Montag a lecture on why books are useless. Then an alarm sounds, and the firemen respond to it -- only for Montag to discover that they have arrived to burn down his own house. As Mildred flees the house with a packed suitcase, jumping into a taxi for the city, the amazed Montag learns that Mildred herself phoned in the report of Montag's hidden books. Beatty orders Montag to burn his own house and books, and Montag numbly obey. As the house burns in the darkness, Beatty mocks Montag and finally strikes him across the face. Montag's "earphone" falls out, and Beatty recognizes what it is. When he laughingly tells Montag that he will track down and arrest Faber too, Montag snaps and attacks Beatty with his kerosene-filled fire house, burning him to death. Then he burns the Mechanical Hound, which leaps out of the darkness to attack him. Montag knocks the other two firemen unconscious, grabs the few books which have not been destroyed, and -- hardly able to take in what's happening to him -- flees to the back alleys. Montag heads to Faber's house. He gives him his books and the last of his money, and together they make plans: Montag will flee to the river and follow it to the wilderness, where it is said that hobo camps live outside of the urban societies. Faber will catch a bus to St. Louis first thing in the morning to see a printer he knows there. As he leaves Faber's house, Montag hears on his earplug radios, and sees on the televisions in the house windows, that there's a manhunt on: another Mechanical Hound is after him. Montag reaches the river just before the manhunt find shim. He is washed downriver in the darkness, until he comes to a wide, dark land: the wilderness. Crawling ashore, he finds the railroad track Faber told him about, and follows it into the darkness. Suddenly, he stumbles across a campfire surrounded by old men. Montag joins them at their fire, and finds they already know who he is -- they have seen the news on their battery-powered television. The old men introduce themselves: They are a group of former professors, writers and humanists, part of a nationwide network of people who have fled modern society to live freely between the cities. And each of them carries, in his head, a book which he has memorized, and which they hope will someday be written down again when civilization has changed. Montag offers to add the little he knows: passages he's memorized from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible he gave to Faber. On their television, Montag and the others watch the end of his manhunt. After Montag escapes, the authorities framed someone else, and the Mechanical Hound kills an innocent person to make the TV audience happy. Montag is now free from their persecution. He decides to join the old men, who, right now, are keeping a strange vigil: War has been declared, and they are waiting to see if the city will be bombed -- which would indicate an end, and new start, to civilization. At sunrise the next morning -- before their very eyes -- a trio of jet bombers appear over the city, bomb it to smithereens, and as rapidly disappear. Civilization is clearly coming to a close, and -- the men hope -- to a new start. Montag stays with them as they begin the journey toward the city, to see what remains and what will happen now. Part 1 (I) Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander (I) The book opens in a scene of burning. A man named Guy Montag is in the midst of an inferno: fire and ash swirl through the air. Montag himself is thinking about how much he loves to see things burn, and likes to see them "changed" by fire. We realize that something strange is going on: Montag is wearing on his head a helmet marked "451," and is setting fire to a house with a hose full of kerosene instead of water -- like a fireman in reverse. Moreover, out on the lawn, piles of books which have been taken out of the house are burning into ashes, their pages flapping like the wings of pigeons. What is going on here? The mysterious Montag is grinning to himself with pleasure, as he thinks about fire, and the power of burning. He returns to "the firehouse" -- the station where he works. There, he changes out of his fireproof helmet and jacket. He leaves on his shirt, which is marked with the symbols of a salamander and phoenix (ancient symbols of fire) and the numerals "451" on the sleeve. Montag leaves the station and catches a futuristic, air-powered train out to the suburb where he lives. It is night, and the streets are empty. As he turns the corner leading to his house, though, he remembers that for the past few nights he's had the feeling that someone has been waiting here for him. Tonight, he suddenly sees this person -- it's a young girl, walking down the sidewalk in the moonlight. She has a pale face with large dark eyes, and as she turns toward him she makes a striking impression on Montag. The girl greets him, saying, in a strange tone of voice: "You must be the fireman." Montag laughs, and says he is. The girl introduces herself as Clarisse McClellan, a new neighbour. Together, they walk together back toward Montag's house. Clarisse tells him about herself: She's seventeen years old, and everyone thinks she's crazy, because she does things like walk around all night and stay up to watch the sunrise. Clarisse asks Montag about his job, and we begin to understand more about the world these two people live in. Montag has been "a fireman" for ten years, and is now thirty years old. But in this version of the future, firemen don't put out fires. Instead, they start them: Their job is to burn down houses which are full of books, because in this world, books are illegal. Everybody is taught that firemen have always started fires -- that there was never been a time when they put them out instead. When Clarisse asks if Montag has ever read any of the books before he burns them, he laughs and reminds her that's against the law. "Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner," he says. "Burn 'em into ashes, and then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan." Clarisse tells Montag what she thinks about the way people live in the modern world. She thinks people live too quickly -- they drive instead of walking, and no one pays enough attention to the natural world to know that there's a man in the moon. She adds that she talks with her uncle and family about these things all the time. Montag laughs uneasily, and Clarisse adds that she thinks Montag is answering her too quickly. She says he does not stop to think about the questions she asks him. The things Clarisse says begin to make Montag uncomfortable and even angry. By the time he leaves her at the door of her house -- where all the lights in the windows are on, because her family is sitting up and talking -- Clarisse's questions have made him restless and doubtful, and he doesn't know why. Just before Clarisse runs up her driveway, she suddenly turns to him and asks him: "Are you happy?" Montag, startled, can't think of an answer before she disappears into the house. Part 1 (II) Montag goes into his own dark house, still thinking about Clarisse's question. When he opens his bedroom door, everything is cold and quiet. As usual, his wife, Mildred, is asleep in bed, with a pair of tiny radios -- called "Seashells" -- in her ears. The Seashells are always "talking" to her, so she doesn't have to think about or pay attention to the world around her. In fact, even when Mildred is asleep, she can still hear the voices in her head. In this cold room, Montag feels his smile disappearing. He has suddenly realized that he is not happy. He feels as if he has been only pretending, wearing his happiness like a mask. But now Clarisse has run away with his mask, and he cannot chase her and demand that she give it back. Montag accidentally kicks a small object, which rolls away under the bed. He stands above his wife's bed, and flicks on his fireman's igniter -- the tool he uses to set fires -- to look at her sleeping face. In that moment, a flight of jet bombers roars above the house, ripping open the night air with their noise. In the wavering light of the flame, Montag sees Mildred's eyes rolled back in her head. He realizes that she's not just asleep: she's taken an overdose of drugs. The tiny object his foot hit was her empty bottle of sleeping pills. As if in a dream, Montag lifts the telephone to call the hospital. Two emergency medical workers, who Montag has never seen before, come to pump out Mildred's stomach and give her a blood transfusion. They smoke cigarettes and gossip, acting as if this is perfectly normal. They tell Montag that these days, people overdose all the time. Montag, feeling depressed and in shock, wonders if the problem is that there are so many people in the world now that nobody knows each other any more. After the medical technicians leave, Montag stare out the window, to Clarisse's lit-up house, and wishes he could go over and talk to them -- he even wanders out onto the lawn. Mildred is asleep in her bed -- her blood has been cleaned out, but Montag knows that won't clean out the emptiness in her soul. He goes back indoors, takes a sleeping pill, and lies down in bed. As he falls asleep it begins to rain. In the morning, Montag tries to talk to her about what happened the night before. But Mildred acts as if nothing happened at all the night before. She has put the Seashells back in her ears, and over their cheerful noise she asks Montag casually if they had a party the night before: she can't understand why she's so hungry. In the late afternoon, as Montag is getting ready for work, he stands in his hallway, looking thoughtfully up at the ventilation shaft above the door. He tries again to talk to Mildred about what happened the night before, but Mildred insists she remembers nothing, and then brings up an old topic: she wants to have a fourth gigantic TV-screen installed in the living room, so she can be totally immersed in her daily interactive soap operas. Montag gently reminds her that they put in the third wall only two months ago, and walks out into the rain to go to work. Outside, he runs into Clarisse, who is walking with her mouth open to drink the rain. She smiles when she sees him, and rubs a dandelion under his chin. When it doesn't come out yellow, she says, "What a shame. You're not in love with anyone." Montag is disturbed by this, and insists that he is in love with his wife, but Clarisse says it doesn't show. Clarisse tells him about the psychiatrist her school makes her see -- who tries to figure out why she does things like collect butterflies, and open her mouth to drink rain. Then, changing the subject, she tells him that it surprises her that he's a fireman. She says she can tell that he thinks about things. Last night, for example, when she mentioned the moon, he actually bothered to look up at it. Most firemen would never do that.
Approximate Word count = 10424
Approximate Pages = 41.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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