Fahrenheit 451 (Plot Summary)

Plot Summary

Part I: the Hearth and the Salamander

Guy Montag is a thirty-year-old fireman experiencing an intellectual awakening. For ten years now he has protected the sanity and comfort of the community by setting fire to books. He and his wife Mildred live comfortably in the suburbs of a large city. All Mildred needs to make her life complete is a fourth TV wall, so she can be surrounded by the characters she watches and interacts with everyday in her living room. True, an international war has been brewing, but nobody much cares as long as they're comfortable.

One evening, after having taken great pleasure in burning a house full of dangerous books, Montag meets Clarisse McClellan. Clarisse, a seventeen-year-old "oddball" neighbor, likes to talk about the world around her. She challenges Montag's authority as a guardian of their way of life. She questions his purpose, practically tells him that he cannot think, and asks him, "Are you happy?" These questions bring to his mind the dissatisfactions which up to now he has only vaguely felt. Going into the house, he finds Mildred lying in bed, practically dead from an overdose of sleeping pills, and he realizes that Mildred's happiness is only a mask, too. The "technicians" who come to fix her up are so casual about it that Montag realizes that something has happened to everybody, that under the "mask of happiness" lies a great emptiness.

Montag's doubt about his way of life begins to show at work. At the fire station they have a Mechanical Hound, which is usually employed to track people with illegal book collections. Now, however, the Hound seems to get suspicious and begins striking at Montag when he comes to work. Captain Beatty promises to fix the Hound, but it continues to sniff around Montag and strike its needle-nose full of poison at him.

One night the station's fire alarm sounds, and the firemen are called out to burn an attic full of books. The firemen chop down the unlocked doors, slap the helpless old woman down, and douse the piled-up books with kerosene. Before they can set the blaze, however, the woman kneels in her piled books, strikes the match, and burns herself with her books. The scene strikes Montag numb — so numb, in fact, that his hands, as if with a mind of their own, steal and hide a book under his arm, which he carries home.

The incident with the unnamed woman only aggravates Montag's doubt and alienation. He is so upset that he lays awake all night, so upset that by morning he feels too sick to go to work. Alerted by Montag's absence, Captain Beatty comes to call on him. Beatty understands his curiosity about the fireman's job and tells him the history of firemen. He tells him that the masses of people wanted the books burned because the differing ideas and information in books confused them and caused conflict. Anytime there was conflict, there was discomfort. All the people wanted was pleasure, so they made the firemen the guardians of their comfort.

"Yes, but what about the firemen, then?" asked Montag. "Ah." Beatty leaned forward in the faint mist of smoke from his pipe. "What more easily explained and natural? With school turning out more rumnners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally 'bright,' did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings, and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it."

After Beatty leaves, Montag reveals to Millie that he has secretly been hoarding books taken from his fires. He begins reading to her to see what might be in them that would cause such love and fear, but she can find no meaning in them.

2. the Sieve and the Sand

Montag continues to read from the books all during the afternoon while something, maybe the Mechanical Hound, scratches at the door, and war jets scream across the sky. Millie argues that the books have no meaning — they aren't "people," as the characters in her television programs are.

Having such a late start in his life, Montag cannot understand much of what he reads, so he decides that he needs a teacher. He remembers an old man, Faber, whom he had met months ago in the city park, a man who had suspiciously hidden something from him as he approached and seemed to be able to quote poetry. On his way to see Faber, he tries to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible, but the constant blaring of a Denham's Dentifrice commercial on the train's sound system interferes.

At first suspicious, Faber listens to Montag sympathetically and helps Montag to understand what books can and cannot do for humans. Faber tells Montag he is wasting his time, he can only "nibble the edges," for the coming war will destroy society and people will rebuild as they always do, but books cannot prevent the cycle from repeating. Montag suggests sabotaging firemen by planting copies of books in their houses and turning them in as traitors, and finally shames Faber into helping him. They make a plan in an effort to save Montag and save the books. First, they will try to make copies of the Bible which Montag had stolen from the fire the previous night. Second, Montag will return to the fire station as a spy with Faber monitoring and analyzing the situation through the use of a two-way listening device placed in both their ears.

Under threatening sounds of jets in the skies overhead, Montag returns home and is impatient with Millie's bland, soulless friends, Mrs. Bowles and Mrs. Phelps. He forces them to listen to a reading of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach," against Faber's advice. He throws them out of the house and returns to the fire station and a knowing Captain Beatty. When Montag gets back to the fire station, there is an alarm, but this time they go to Montag's house.

3. Burning Bright

They arTive just as Mildred is leaving home for good. Captain Beatty baits and teases Montag until Montag bums his own house down. All this time, Faber has been trying to help Montag by whispering in his ear, but now Beatty discovers the earradio and takes it away. In his confusion, Montag's hands again move on their own and turn the flamethrower on Beatty, killing him. Suddenly, the Mechanical Hound appears, and Montag turns the flame onto it even though the Hound manages to get a partial injection of anesthetic into Montag before its circuitry is burned.

Now, Montag limps through the back alleys, stopping only to rescue a few unburned books. Despite the manhunt, he stops to plant some of them in the house of Black, a fellow fireman, in order to cast suspicion on firemen in general. He then moves on to Faber's house, where from Faber's tiny TV they learn that Montag has become the subject of a massive manhunt and a media event using helicopters and a sophisticated new Mechanical Hound. They also learn that war has been declared.

They decide on a new course of action. Faber will go to St. Louis to visit a printer he knows, and Montag will head for the countryside. In a desperate attempt to prevent the Hound from following his scent into Faber's house, they take measures to try to confuse the Hound's sense of smell. Montag manages to stay ahead of the manhunt and makes it to the river. He plunges into the river, listening to the confusion of the hunt approach the bank and watching the helicopter sweep the river. His tactics for throwing the Hound off the scent have worked, and the hunt turns back into the city while Montag floats on downstream.

He drifts until nearly dawn. When he climbs out onto the bank, he stumbles up to the old railroad tracks and begins to follow them away from the city. Montag doesn't go very far before he hears voices, and he sneaks up to listen to a conversation. They know he is there, however, and they know who he is, having watched the chase on a small portable TV. One of them, the leader Granger, calls him out and offers him coffee and a bottle of chemical which will change his body's chemical signature so the Hound won't be able to find him. They all sit and watch the end of the manhunt, which is now focused on an innocent scapegoat. The authorities can't disappoint the viewing public.

It turns out that these wanderers are "book covers," each having a book memorized and ready for recitation. They plan to pass this knowledge onto their children and wait until society needs that knowledge again. They don't have long to wait, because several bombs hit the city while they are hiking that day. After weathering the shock waves from the blast, they turn back; civilization needs them. On the way, Montag begins to remember Ecclesiastes.