Guy Montag is a fireman who
burns books in a futuristic American city. In Montag’s world, firemen
start fires rather than putting them out. The people in this society
do not read books, enjoy nature, spend time by themselves, think
independently, or have meaningful conversations. Instead, they drive
very fast, watch excessive amounts of television on wall-size sets,
and listen to the radio on “Seashell Radio” sets attached to their
ears.
Montag encounters a gentle seventeen-year-old girl named
Clarisse McClellan, who opens his eyes to the emptiness of his life
with her innocently penetrating questions and her unusual love of
people and nature. Over the next few days, Montag experiences a
series of disturbing events. First, his wife, Mildred, attempts
suicide by swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills. Then, when he
responds to an alarm that an old woman has a stash of hidden literature,
the woman shocks him by choosing to be burned alive along with her
books. A few days later, he hears that Clarisse has been killed
by a speeding car. Montag’s dissatisfaction with his life increases,
and he begins to search for a solution in a stash of books that
he has stolen from his own fires and hidden inside an air-conditioning
vent.
When Montag fails to show up for work, his fire chief,
Beatty, pays a visit to his house. Beatty explains that it’s normal
for a fireman to go through a phase of wondering what books have
to offer, and he delivers a dizzying monologue explaining how books
came to be banned in the first place. According to Beatty, special-interest groups
and other “minorities” objected to books that offended them.
Soon, books all began to look the same, as writers tried to avoid offending
anybody. This was not enough, however, and society as a whole decided
to simply burn books rather than permit conflicting opinions. Beatty
tells Montag to take twenty-four hours or so to see if his stolen
books contain anything worthwhile and then turn them in for incineration.
Montag begins a long and frenzied night of reading.
Overwhelmed by the task of reading, Montag looks
to his wife for help and support, but she prefers television to
her husband’s company and cannot understand why he would want to
take the terrible risk of reading books. He remembers that he once
met a retired English professor named Faber sitting in a park, and
he decides that this man might be able to help him understand what
he reads. He visits Faber, who tells him that the value of books
lies in the detailed awareness of life that they contain. Faber
says that Montag needs not only books but also the leisure to read
them and the freedom to act upon their ideas.
Faber agrees to help Montag with his reading,
and they concoct a risky scheme to overthrow the status quo. Faber
will contact a printer and begin reproducing books, and Montag will
plant books in the homes of firemen to discredit the profession
and to destroy the machinery of censorship. Faber gives him a two-way
radio earpiece (the “green bullet”) so that he can hear what Montag
hears and talk to him secretly.
Montag goes home, and soon two of his wife’s friends arrive
to watch television. The women discuss their families and the war
that is about to be declared in an extremely frivolous manner. Their superficiality
angers him, and he takes out a book of poetry and reads “Dover Beach”
by Matthew Arnold. Faber buzzes in his ear for him to be quiet,
and Mildred tries to explain that the poetry reading is a standard
way for firemen to demonstrate the uselessness of literature. The
women are extremely disturbed by the poem and leave to file a complaint
against Montag.
Montag goes to the fire station and hands over one of
his books to Beatty. Beatty confuses Montag by barraging him with
contradictory quotations from great books. Beatty exploits these
contradictions to show that literature is morbid and dangerously
complex, and that it deserves incineration. Suddenly, the alarm
sounds, and they rush off to answer the call, only to find that
the alarm is at Montag’s own house. Mildred gets into a cab with
her suitcase, and Montag realizes that his own wife has betrayed
him.
Beatty forces Montag to burn the house himself;
when he is done, Beatty places him under arrest. When Beatty continues
to berate Montag, Montag turns the flamethrower on his superior
and proceeds to burn him to ashes. Montag knocks the other firemen
unconscious and runs. The Mechanical Hound, a monstrous machine
that Beatty has set to attack Montag, pounces and injects Montag’s
leg with a large dose of anesthetic. Montag manages to destroy it
with his flamethrower; then he walks off the numbness in his leg
and escapes with some books that were hidden in his backyard. He
hides these in another fireman’s house and calls in an alarm from
a pay phone.
Montag goes to Faber’s house, where he learns that a new
Hound has been put on his trail, along with several helicopters
and a television crew. Faber tells Montag that he is leaving for
St. Louis to see a retired printer who may be able to help them.
Montag gives Faber some money and tells him how to remove Montag’s
scent from his house so the Hound will not enter it. Montag then
takes some of Faber’s old clothes and runs off toward the river.
The whole city watches as the chase unfolds on TV, but Montag manages
to escape in the river and change into Faber’s clothes to disguise
his scent. He drifts downstream into the country and follows a set
of abandoned railroad tracks until he finds a group of renegade
intellectuals (“the Book People”), led by a man named Granger, who
welcome him. They are a part of a nationwide network of book lovers
who have memorized many great works of literature and philosophy.
They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the aftermath
of the war that has just been declared. Montag’s role is to memorize
the Book of Ecclesiastes. Enemy jets appear in the sky and completely obliterate
the city with bombs. Montag and his new friends move on to search
for survivors and rebuild civilization.
