For instance, the very first scene of the book is a mystery: although we're grabbed by the exciting description of fire, it takes a few more pages before we actually begin to understand what it is Montag does. Later on, we see Montag looking and thinking about his ventilator grill several times before we -- the readers -- ever learn what it actually behind it. But when we do, we feel we should have known all along. The periodic noise of the jet planes in the background is easy to overlook when it first appears (while Montag is looking at the sleeping Mildred). But the noise becomes a subtle backdrop to the book, slowly growing louder and louder until it finally provides the book with its spectacular ending. And in one of the final scenes, when Montag has fled into the countryside as is walking through the dark forest, his foot suddenly strikes the side of the railroad track. The noise it makes reminds us of the sound his foot made when he kicked the empty bottle of sleeping pills, in his and Mildred's bedroom, in one of the first scenes of the book -- starting the series of changes which will overwhelm him.
Why do you think Bradbury does this? Do these "hidden secrets" make you want to go back and read the book again to look for them? Do you find it an annoying tendency in the writer? Or do you think it has anything to do with what Faber is talking to Montag about -- the "pores" of complex literature?
Changing With the Times: Although Fahrenheit 451 is set in a not-too-distant future, it shows clear marks of the times it was written in (the book was first published in 1953). Think of its images of suburbia, with housewives who don't work and husbands who supply them with a never-ending stream of household appliances, its isolationist America and Internet-free social world, its men who go off to war when drafted and women who spend all day gossiping, watching TV, and popping sleeping pills to mask their unhappiness -- this landscape is fairly clearly a projection into the future which was based in the 1950s, not in the early twenty-first century.
We might say that other elements, perhaps more subtle, also make it clear that Fahrenheit 451 dates back half a century. Think about some of the concerns which seem to preoccupy Bradbury in the book. Do any of them seem to you to be more relevant to the '50s than they are to us today? Do some remain as relevant now as they were then? Consider the book's apparent concenr about: increasingly wild and violent youth culture; the increasing presence, speed and danger from cars; the seldom-discussed imbalance between tjhe qualit yof living in the USA and other countries; the dangers of American warmongering; the devlining level of public education for teenagers. Do some of these conersn seem outdated to you? Are some still cause for thought today?
Now: what about Fahrenheit 451's condemnation opf the speeded-up-ness of the world, so that people don't give themselves time to think and drwam any more? Wjhat about his apparent fear that TV and mass media are replacing human contact? How about hsi concern about the way people let their thinking about politics be guided and influences by the "soft sell" of TV? Have these themes ceased to be relevsnt, or are they -- as some people suggest -- more important today than ever? If taht is the case, does Bradbury's book, even with its 1950s imagery, still make their urgency seem immediate to us? Why or why not?
Finally, bear in mind that when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, its central theme -- censorship -- was also a concern fo the moment. It was published at the height of the "McCarthy era," during which Wisconsin senator Jospeh McCarthy almost single-handedly created a sense of paranoia in the U.S. government which spread to affect all of U.S. culture, from Hollywood to high schoolers. McCarthy believced tha the American government was infiltrated with Communist spies, and the result was a culture of concealment, suspicion, and suppression of potentially "subversive" ideas and literature. The year Fahrenheit 451 was published, Bradbury is quoted as saying, "Whether or not my ideas on censorship via the fire department will be old hat by this time next week, I dare not predict. When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy."
Did You Know?
Who Watches the Watchers?: Fahrenheit 451 has itself been subject to censorship in various school systems. This is so ironic -- given its anti-censorship theme! -- that these instances have garnered a lot of public attention. Actually, the censorship had little to do with the book's subject matter; instead, parents have sometimes objected to the many uses of "hell" and "damn" in the original printing of the book. Fahrenheit 451 has been censored or removed from reading lists several times in the 1990s alone, in places as far-flung as Mississippi and California. (In one famous instance, students were given copies of the book with the obscenities blacked out. Can you think of a more effective way to get them to take the book's subject matter seriously?)
At the Movies: In 1966, Fahrenheit 451 was made into a movie by highly respected New Wave French film director Francois Truffaut, starring British actress Julie Christie. The film received mixed reviews: it was said to be visually interesting, but critics complained that the dialogue was too stiff. The problem, it seems, was that Truffaut and collaborator Jean-Louis Richard were so excited about the project that they insisted on writing the screenplay themselves -- before either of them had fully mastered English! They were much happier, in the end, with the French-dubbed version. How this linguistic confusion might relate to the book's theme is left as an exercise for the student. Another curiosity of the movie is that the credits are spoken aloud, instead of printed -- in an obvious but clever echo of the book's theme of forbidden writing.
Fire Symbolism: As you've noticed, Fahrenheit 451 is loaded with symbolism. One of its central "clusters" of images relates to fire: the number "451," the salamander, and the phoenix, all of which appear on Montag's fireman's shirt. (Clarisse sees them the first time she meets him, and seems to be fascinated by them.) "Fahrenheit 451," of course, is the temperature at which paper catches fire and burns. A "salamander" these days might be a little amphibious animal, but the name comes from ancient mythology: the salamander was believed to be a marvelous creature which could pass through fire without being hurt. (The firemen's fire truck is referred to as the "Salamander" a few times in the book.) And the phoenix is a bird from Asian myth, which was reputed to incinerate itself in flames every thousand years and be reborn out of its own ashes. This legend has a lot of useful symbolism for Bradbury, of course: Granger, the old man who leads the group of exiled humanists out in the wilds beyond the city, cites this myth after the city's bombing. His meaning is that humans, like the phoenix, are always burning themselves up. But we can also be reborn, and someday -- he hopes -- humans will learn enough to be able to stop the fire: to put an end to war, the destroyer of civilizations and life.
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 neighbor, 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 obeys. 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 neighbor. 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, 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. So why -- Clarisse asks -- is Montag in his line of work?
Montag cannot answer. He feels something very strange happening inside him, as if his heart and body are dividing in two. When Clarisse runs off to her psychiatrist's appointment, he stands there in the rain for a long time, unable to move. Finally, he starts to move again, walking toward the fire station -- and as he walks, he opens his mouth to drink the rain.
Part 1 (III)
Montag arrives at the fire station, as usual, at one o'clock AM. He first stops by the doghouse of the Mechanical Hound -- this future's answer to the traditional firehouse Dalmatian. But the Hound is really a huge, terrifying robot in the shape of a dog. It has eight legs and rubber-padded paws, with which it tracks down its victims and kills them with a poisoned needle in its muzzle. (Presumably -- although this remains unstated -- the Hound is sent after rebels who have been discovered to keep books in their houses.)
As he crouches to look at the "dozing" monster, Montag thinks of the games the firemen often play with it, in which they turn loose a bunch of live chickens or cats and place bets on which the Hound will kill first. But, lately, Montag hasn't been up to playing these games with the other firemen.
Montag gently touches the Hound. It suddenly growls, rouses up, and starts toward him with its needle extended. Frozen in fear, Montag waits for it to go back to "sleep."
Half in shock, Montag heads up to the top floor of the station. Here her finds the other firemen, Stoneman and Black, and the fire captain, Beatty. They are playing cards.
Montag tells them what just happened. He also mentions that the Hound has reacted to him three times in the past two months. But Beatty, the Fire Captain, laughs and reminds him that that's impossible: The Hound is only a robot, and must be programmed by humans to seek out a certain combination of amino acids. Only then can it track down and kills its victim.
Beatty promises he'll have a technician look at the Hound tomorrow. But he notices Montag's nervousness, and asks, as if joking, if Montag has a guilty conscience. Montag -- who has, for some reason, been thinking very hard about what he has hidden in his ventilator grille at home -- gives the Captain a strange look but doesn't answer. Beatty, staring at him with a knowing expression, softly begins to laugh.
During the next week, Montag sees a lot of Clarisse, running into her every time he comes out of his house. She talks to him about very unusual things -- why he and his wife have no children, the way old leaves smell like cinnamon, and how alienated Clarisse feels from the anarchic games of teenagers her own age. She mentions that her friends are always dying in car crashes. Clarisse tells him that she loves to watch people, and that she has learned they don't really talk about anything with each other any more.
Montag, who feels a connection with her that he's never felt before, finds himself looking at the world differently. Meanwhile, at the fire station, he avoids the Mechanical Hound, and Beatty continues to tease him about his nervousness.
One afternoon, Clarisse isn't there when Montag leaves the house. Montag feels lost without knowing why. In the firehouse that evening, he feels alienated from the other firemen, although he's worked with them for the past ten years. He begins to ask them questions like the ones Clarisse has asked him -- for instance, didn't firemen once put out fires instead of starting them? The other firemen laugh at him and start to pull out their history books, but they are interrupted by the sound of a bell: they have a fire to take care of!
Part 1 (IV)
For the first time, we see Montag and the other firemen at work. They stop their fire truck, called "the Salamander," in front of a three-story house in the oldest part of the city. The firemen rush inside, with Montag lagging behind, and seize an old woman. When they show her the "complaint" signed by a neighbor which told them where to find her, the woman quotes a strange, ancient-sounding phrase at them. The firemen rush upstairs, slicing through the doors with their axes to get at the books inside. Books tumble all around them, and Montag, as if moving in a dream, watches his own hand grab a single book and stuff it under his jacket.
The other firemen have been spraying the house with kerosene, and now try to get the woman to leave the house with them so they can arrest her. But she refuses to leave. Captain Beatty urges Montag to hurry up, since they have to get back to the firehouse, and, he says, these suicides are always the same. Montag asks her one last time, but she refuses, and the firemen run out of the house. Behind them, the woman strikes a match against the staircase, and as the house roars up in flames all the neighbors come outside to watch.
The firemen ride back to the firehouse in silence, not looking at each other. Stoneman tries to remember the strange thing the woman in the house said to them, and Fire Captain Beatty startles them all by quoting the entire phrase: "Play the man, Master Ridley. We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." These were the final words of a man named Latimer as he and his friend Ridley were being burned alive for heresy in England in 1555. Beatty adds that all fire captains are full of "bits and pieces" of books like this.
When Montag goes home, he feels terrible, as if his hands -- which grabbed and hid the book earlier, at the house-burning -- have been infected with some strange virus. He hides the book under his pillow, and falls into his bed. Mildred, worried, tries to talk to him, but Montag can only whimper, and starts to weep silently. Later that night, he asks Mildred if she can remember where they first met, but neither of them can remember. Montag suddenly feels as if he doesn't really know his wife at all.
Later still, that same night, Montag tries to talk to Mildred about Clarisse McClellan. To his shock, Mildred tells him that she thinks Clarisse is dead -- that she heard Clarisse was run over by a car four days ago, and the family has moved out. Mildred puts the Seashell back in her ear, and Montag lies awake in bed, wondering if the Mechanical Hound is prowling around outside, and whether it would find him if he were to open the window.
Part 1 (V)
In the morning, Montag has chills and a fever. Mildred -- who, as usual, has the TV-walls blaring loudly in the living room -- reminds him that he's never been sick before. But Montag thinks that he can still smell the kerosene from last night's burning, and vomits on the bedroom floor.
Montag tries to tell Mildred about the old woman the fireman burned with her books, but Mildred doesn't want to understand what he's saying, and offers him no sympathy. Montag, though, can't stop thinking about it. He says there must be something amazing inside books to make somebody willing to stay in a house and die with them. He tells Mildred he's really bothered by something, for the first time in his life.
Then he suddenly remembers that Mildred, too, must be really bothered by something -- he had almost forgotten about her suicide attempt the week before. But Mildred can't acknowledge what bothers her. Montag thinks of there being another Mildred so deep inside the one he knows, one so deeply unhappy, that the two women have never met each other.
Montag is now two hours late for work, since Montag has not been able to get up the nerve to call in sick and Mildred refused to do it for him. For some reason, Montag is feeling afraid of Fire Captain Beatty.
A car pulls into the driveway, and Beatty comes into the house to visit him. Beatty has a strange, heart-to-heart conversation with Montag. He has guessed that Montag is having a crisis of conscience, and tells him that sooner or later every fireman has this problem. Then he gives Montag a condensed history of the recent past:
After the age of mass media began -- photography, TV, movies -- there was less room left in the word for individual thought. Everyone was reading and thinking the same things, and they wanted things to be shorter and shorter, and faster and faster. Also, people didn't want to be bothered by ideas that were different, or which troubled them and made them unhappy. And no one wanted to offend any minorities -- and nearly everyone counts as part of a minority. So it wasn't a government law, but popular desire, that gradually made books less and less popular. "Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick," Beatty tells him.
Meanwhile, Mildred is trying to be helpful and fluff up Montag's pillow. But Montag is terrified, because he remembers the book he slipped behind the pillow last night. He struggles silently to keep the confused Mildred from moving his pillow, while Beatty pretends not to notice anything is going on.
Beatty goes on with his story: Eventually, books were outlawed. After all, people have never liked intellectuals -- just as nerdy children are tormented in school, people who read too much are considered irritating and dangerous. "A book is a loaded gun in the house next door," adds Beatty. "Take the shot from the weapon... If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry about; give him one. Better yet, give him none." Magazines, comics, and similar entertainment are still legal, but dangerous, unsettling old books? They were outlawed. When all houses were finally fireproofed, firemen were given the new job of "custodians of our peace of mind": it was their responsibility to burn books.
Beatty adds that he's been watching the McClellan family -- there are records on them. He says Clarisse McClellan was a time bomb, and is better off dead. Then Beatty adds that every fireman occasionally gets the urge to find out what a book says. He assures Montag that books are empty -- they're just full of noise, nothing interesting or useful.
Montag asks what happens if a fireman "accidentally" takes a book home with him, and Beatty calmly answers that in such a situation, the fireman would be given twenty-four hours of grace. Then, if he hasn't come to his senses and burned it, the other firemen would come burn it for him. Leaving Montag with that frightening though, he gets up to go, telling Montag he expects to see him later today. Montag says goodbye. But he is thinking to himself that he will never go in to work again.
After Beatty leaves, Montag tells Mildred that he is thinking of quitting his job. He feels as if he is full of things that have been building up in him, and he wants to hold onto this strange feeling. Then Montag pulls a chair into the hallway, climbs up to the ventilator shaft, opens it up, and begins to pull out -- books!! He confesses to Mildred that he's been hiding books there every now and then for the past year -- he didn't even want to admit it to himself. Now there are almost twenty books hidden in the wall. Mildred is terrified, but Montag pleads for her to be patient with him, just for one day, and read with him, in order to find out whether what Beatty said is true.
Mildred and Montag hear somebody at the front door, and freeze in fear. Is it Beatty coming back? With the illegal books all over the floor, Mildred and Montag don't dare to answer. Finally, the person goes away. Picking up a book at random from the floor, Montag slowly starts to read it aloud to Mildred.
Part 2 (I)
Part 2: The Sieve and the Sand (I)
All afternoon, as it rains outside, Montag and Mildred sit in the hallway, trying to read the books. Or, rather, Montag tries to read them to Mildred. Montag finds the books confusing but fascinating. Mildred, however, is restless and nervous. She keeps trying to return to the parlor, where Montag has forcibly shut off the TV-walls. She complains that the books are not people -- like the "family" of characters in her interactive soap operas -- and that she cannot get anything out of them.
But Montag, fueled by his obsession, believes that the books may hold the answers he and Mildred need. He tries to remind her how unhappy the two of them really are: she with her sleeping pills and the suicide attempts which she won't acknowledge in the light of day, and he with his newfound hatred of his job. He asks her why people like Captain Beatty should be afraid of people like Clarisse, just because she asked questions and thought for herself. And when they hear the jet plans pass overhead again, he reminds Mildred of larger world issues: Their country has recently started and won two atomic wars, and it's said that the rest of the world works hard and is poor to keep their nation rich and happy. But no one thinks or talks about these things. Montag is convinced that the books may hold some valuable help for their confused and unhappy world: that they may at least be able to explain the errors people and in the past, and help keep them from making them again.
Suddenly, there is a sound like a dog scratching at the door. Mildred wants to let it in, but Montag won't let her. He's sure he can smell the electric odor of the terrifying Mechanical Hound. Does Beatty know that he has these books?
To Montag's relief, the sound at the door finally disappears. To Mildred's great delight, a friend of hers calls on the phone. While she chatters away, Montag -- left alone in the hallway -- has a flashback to a strange encounter he had a year ago with a man he met in a park.
This man, named Faber, was a retired English professor, and although Montag thinks he guessed Montag is a fireman, Faber quoted poetry to Montag -- totally illegally. Faber gave him his address, but Montag has never turned him in to the fire station. Now Montag can't stop thinking about this man. Could Faber help him resolve his problems?
Montag calls Faber. Faber is suspicious and taciturn over the phone, but Montag resolves to go visit him. The book Montag stole from the burning house has turned out to be a King James Bible, and Montag suspects he may have in his possession the only Bible left in his part of the world. He has the sudden desire to show it to Faber, before he has to go to the station and turn it over to Beatty later that night.
On his way out the door, Mildred catches him to tell him that her friends -- whom she calls the "ladies" -- will be coming over that night to watch a program called the White Clown. Montag asks Mildred, very seriously, if the TV character of the White Clown loves her. Mildred seems not to understand the question, and Montag, very sadly, leaves.
Part 2 (II)
Montag catches the subway toward Faber's house. As he sits in the train car, he feels as if his entire body is numb. He wonders when that numbness started -- the night he met Clarisse? The moment he accidentally kicked Mildred's empty bottle of suicide pills under the bed?
Montag decides he must try to memorize the Bible he has in his hands. What if he never has another chance? But the sound of an advertisement is, as usual, being chanted through the train's sound system -- an ad which repeats "Denham's Dentifrice, Denham's Dentifrice" over and over again. (A "dentifrice," by the way, is more or less toothpaste.)
Although Montag tries desperately to memorize part of the book -- particularly the line "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin" -- the noise is so distracting that he forgets the words as soon as he reads them. Montag is reminded of a childhood memory, of trying to fill up a sieve with sand: right now, he feels as if his mind is a sieve and the words are falling out of it. He feels so desperate that -- although he's openly holding a book openly on a train full of people -- he stands up and yells at the loudspeakers: "Shut up!" The other passengers stare, and Montag staggers off the train just before missing his stop.
When Montag reaches Faber's house, he finds the old man looking tired, thin and suspicious. Faber interrogates Montag, asking what has shaken Montag up -- after all, he's been a fireman for years: why is he no longer happy with the status quo? Montag says that he doesn't know what's wrong with him and the world, but he knows something is. And the only things Montag knows are now missing from the world are all the books he's been burning for the past ten years. So he thought turning back to books for the answers might help.
Faber shakes his head affectionately, calling Montag a romantic fool. He tells him that it isn't really books that are missing from the world, but some of the things that books used to contain -- certain kinds of information and art, which might just as easily exist on the TV-screens and radios of the present day, but do not. The first thing that's missing, Faber says, is art with "pores." By this he means art which is full of the details of life, including its stupidities and ugliness. The only things the magazines and TV shows have, he says, is images of life in which all the distracting details are glossed over. That is like trying to grow flowers in air instead of earth. No wonder people feel as if something's missing.
The second missing thing is enough leisure time for people to think about what they see and read. Montag says that everyone has plenty of off-hours, but Faber points out that that time is jammed with activities, and that it's hard to even find a quiet place in the world to sit and think -- one that isn't full of noise. Montag remembers the advertising voice on the train, and agrees wholeheartedly.
And the third thing that has disappeared from the world, Faber says -- along with quality of information, and the leisure time to think about that information -- is freedom for people to act on the conclusions they come to. But, clearly, people these days don't have the freedom to change things if they wanted to. Faber says he doesn't think a very old man and a rebellious fireman can change the world enough to make that possible again.
Montag, however, is determined to start a revolution. Tasking Faber up on an off-the-cuff suggestion, he hatches a daring plan: He persuades Faber it would be possible to start a sabotage network to destroy the firemen themselves, by planting books in the houses of firemen across the nation -- using the classified information Montag has access to -- so their own houses will be burned down. Faber admits that he has plenty of elderly friends -- bitter former writers, linguists, historians, stage actors - - who might help.
Faber, shocked by the audacity of this plan, tries to back out. He tells Montag that there's nothing the two of them can do. They'll have to wait for the upcoming war to destroy their culture entirely, and then people can start again. To shock Faber, Montag starts to savagely tear up the Bible in his hands. Faber, who really does care about books and wants to help, finally agrees to try Montag's plan to destroy the firemen's network.
Faber also asks Montag to bring all the money he has saved up -- four or five hundred dollars -- so Faber can call a former printer he knows and try to get copies of the stolen Bible made. Montag, meanwhile, will give Beatty a different book in the evening, and hope he doesn't notice the switch.
Finally, Faber gives Montag a special device he has invented. This is a tiny electronic earplug, like a green bullet, that Montag can fit inside his ear. From his ends, in the safety of his home, Faber will now be able to hear everything Montag hears, and will also be able to talk to Montag. This way, he can help support him against the persuasive arguments of people like Beatty -- for Montag is afraid Beatty will try to change his way of thinking back to how it used to be. As Montag goes outside to head home, Faber, sitting in his house, keeps talking to him through the earplug. He opens Montag's Bible and, in a voice only Montag can hear in his ear, reads to him from the Book of Job.
Part 2 (III)
As soon as Montag gets home, things begin to fall apart. Mildred has invited two friends over to watch the White Clown on the TV-wall with her. These women are named Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, and to Montag they seem like perfect examples of everything wrong with people today. They keep talking about how they don't worry about their husbands in the military service, how they "take care" of their children by plunking them is front of the TV, and how they both voted in the recent Presidential elections based on which candidate looked more handsome on TV.
Montag, overflowing with a newfound sense of rage, decides to shock these women into really thinking for once. Despite Faber's voice, which is shrieking warnings in his ear not to ruin everything at the start, and over Mildred's nervous objections, Montag reads the ladies a poem from one of the books of poetry hidden in the house. The poem is by Matthew Arnold, and is called Dover Beach. [**Link to this poem?**] Its effect upon Mildred's friends is devastating. One of the ladies is left crying helplessly, the second is furious; they both leave Montag's house, swearing never to come back.
Faber, whose voice buzzes in Montag's ear through the electronic "bullet," scolds Montag severely: He may have ruined everything, destroying all their plans. But then he helps Montag calm down, and tells him he will learn from his experiences. Montag, with a vague sense of worry, takes the remaining books out of his house and hides them in the shrubbery. He notices that there are fewer than there used to be: it seems that Mildred has already begun burning them, one by one.
While the half-hysterical Mildred takes sleeping pills and shuts herself in the bedroom, Montag gets ready to go to work. Through the "bullet" in his ear, he asks Faber to help him stay strong, for he knows that Fire Captain Beatty will use all the tricks he knows to try to persuade Montag that he should go back to his old way of thinking. In the fire house -- which seems oddly empty, for the Mechanical Hound is out doing a job -- Montag hands over a book to Beatty. It isn't the Bible Montag stole from the burning house, but, to Montag's relief, Beatty doesn't even check the title before throwing it away.
Then, just as Montag and Faber expected, Beatty begins to try to convince Montag to go back to his old way of thinking. that books are useless. He does this by quoting books themselves, to try to prove to Montag that all books are useless -- he cites Alexander Pope, Samuel Johnson, William Shakespeare, and other great writers who, at times, criticized the folly of writers and the inadequacy of writing. Montag is left very confused and unhappy, but Faber's voice in his ear keeps him steady.
Just as Beatty finishes this verbal brow-beating, the fire alarm rings. Although Montag says he feels tired and sick, Beatty cheerfully orders all the firemen into the Salamander, and they roar off through the night to the address. Beatty is driving, for once, and Montag dully notices that his flapping firecoat makes him look like a giant bat. But when they pull up in front of the house they are to burn, gradually, through his haze of confusion, Montag notices something very strange: they have pulled up in front of his own house.
Part 3 (I)
Part Three: Burning Bright (I)
As the other firemen prepare Montag's house for burning, doors open all down the street and the neighbors come out to watch the show. Montag stands frozen, while Beatty starts to taunt him. He tells Montag he should have known what was coming -- after all, didn't he notice when Beatty sent the Mechanical Hound to sniff around his house? (This explains the presence Montag sensed at the beginning of Part 2, when he and Mildred heard a noise like a dog scratching at the door.)
Montag instinctively looks toward the empty house where Clarisse and her family once lived. But Beatty mocks him again. He says people like Clarisse are sentimental and self-righteous, but never do any good in the end. Faber's voice buzzes through the "green bullet" in Montag's ear, urging him to run, but Montag cries out that he can't, because of the Mechanical Hound. Beatty, not understanding Montag's cry, gloatingly confirms that the Hound is nearby in case Montag tries to run.
Suddenly, the door of Montag's house opens and Mildred runs out with a suitcase in her hand. Montag realizes that she must have been the one who called in the fire alarm. But she doesn't even stop to look at him, simply jumping into the cab which pulls up to meet her at the curb. Montag can hear her murmuring unhappily about her lost "family" -- that is, the TV characters in her wall.
Beatty stands on the lawn, flicking his fireman's igniter on and off. He launches into another speech, praising fire. He "reminds" Montag that fire is the simplest, cleanest solution to any problem: if you burn something, then you don't have to think about it any more.
Then Beatty orders Montag to burn down his house himself -- not with kerosene and a match, but alone, with his flamethrower, room by room. Montag goes into the house, where he discovers that Mildred has piled the books back inside before calling in the alarm, He obeys Beatty, moving from room to room and setting everything on fire. As he destroys the sterile bedroom, the awful TV room, all the reminders of the unhappy and stifled life he and Mildred lived together here, he feels a kind of satisfaction, and wonders if Beatty is right: maybe fire is the solution after all. Approaching from behind, Beatty quietly reminds him that when he's done, Montag is under arrest.
Part 3 (II)
By 3:30 AM, the fire is over. The house and books are destroyed and the neighbors have gone back to their houses. Beatty, who is still out on the lawn with the other firemen, tells Montag that it was, indeed, Mildred who called in the alarm about her own house.
But Beatty adds that Mildred's two friends, Mrs., Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, has also phoned in an alarm. He tauntingly tells Montag how stupid it was of him to go around reading poetry at people -- the act of an egomaniac. Reminding Montag how powerless he and his books really are, he suddenly slaps him hard on the side of the head. Faber's electronic "green bullet" is knocked out, and falls to the ground; Beatty, picking it up, realizes what it is, and smilingly tells Montag that he will have it traced and then they will get Faber as well.
Montag reacts with anger, and, barely realizing what he is doing, threatens Beatty with the only weapon he has -- the flame-thrower, still in his hands. But, instead of acting frightened, Beatty begins to taunt Montag. He dares him to pull the trigger, and starts to move toward him. Montag, scarcely knowing what he is doing, does pull the trigger. In horror, he watches as Beatty is enveloped in flames, flailing about on the lawn like a hideous puppet for a few moments before he dies in flames. Montag can only stare in shock.
The other two firemen, Stoneman and Black, are also stunned into horrified silence. Montag, trying hard not to be sick, orders them both to turn around. Then he hits them hard on the back of the head, knocking off their helmets and knocking them unconscious.
Suddenly, the Mechanical Hound appears from out of the darkness. It leaps across the lawn to kill Montag with its poisoned needle, but just in time Montag shoots it with the flame-thrower too. Nonetheless, the Hound manages to sting him in the leg before the fire destroys it, and Montag, staggering into the street, is nearly run over by a car going at ninety miles an hour. Barely knowing where he's going, with his half-anesthetized leg stinging him at every step, Montag begins to hobble off through the dark alleys. Suddenly he's on the run.
Montag decides he'd better save what he can. Going back to his smoldering house, he finds a few books left in the garden -- books Mildred missed when she brought them indoors. Montag picks them up and starts to flee through the alleys again, hearing distant sirens approaching, as police and firemen converge on the scene.
Suddenly, Montag falls to his knees in the alley, overcome by anguish. It has suddenly occurred to him that Beatty wanted to die -- that was why he didn't even try to save himself, but instead taunted Montag, even knowing that Montag was desperate and had a flamethrower in his hands. Montag thinks about how strange this must be -- to want to die so much that you would taunt a half-crazy armed man. Somewhere deep inside of him, he knows it is true.
Part 3 (III)
Montag sits there, trying to piece together everything he's seen and done in the last few weeks. But he can't seem to make sense of it. He hears the sound of people approaching, and forces himself to stand up and start moving. The pain in his leg grows less, and soon he can walk again.
Montag realizes he has to visit Faber, even if just for a few minutes, to say goodbye. He also wants to give him the money he promised -- which Montag is still carrying with him. In his pocket, Montag finds his "normal" Seashell, which functions as a city-wide radio. He turns it on -- only to hear that a massive manhunt is being mounted to find him. Everybody in the city has been alerted to keep an eye out for Montag and try to catch him!
Montag keeps walking, and eventually comes to a gas station and a wide street he'll need to cross. He washes up in a gas-station bathroom, hoping he will escape attention if he doesn't look like a fugitive, and starts walking slowly across the street. An approaching car suddenly begins to speed up, and to Montag's horror it chases him down the street, nearly running him down and killing him. Montag is saved only by falling down at the last minute.
At first, Montag thinks this is a police car, but then he realizes it isn't. It is only a car full of teenagers, aged twelve to sixteen, who entertain themselves like all teenagers: by driving recklessly down the highways, killing other people, and risking death themselves. Montag suddenly wonders if this was the car that killed Clarisse, and for a moment he wants to chase after the drivers, shouting. But instead he disappears into the darkness on the other side of the street -- just as well, since the teenagers have turned around and started to come back to chase him again.
On his way to Faber's house, Montag stops in at the house of his fellow fireman, Black. Black, of course, is still out "working" (presumably being revived by the police on Montag's lawn right now). Only his wife is in the house, asleep. Montag plants in the house one of the books he's still carrying, and makes an anonymous call to the firehouse from a pay phone, before continuing on his way. Behind him he can hear the sound of the firemen's sirens approaching.
When Montag makes it to Faber's house, Faber explains that he heard Montag's and Beatty's voices cut off abruptly when Montag set fire to Beatty, and he didn't know what had happened to Montag.
Montag asks, helplessly, if Faber can help explain to him what's happening. He can't think of any way to make sense of what he's seen and done -- or what he's become -- in the past week: Montag has just killed his fire chief. He feels as if he's never known his wife, His house has been burnt down and he certainly isn't a fireman nay more.
Faber tells Montag that he has only done what he needed to do. He also reassures him that he himself, Faber, feels more alive than he has in years. In this world, Faber feels, people like himself and Montag have no other choice but to do what they are doing, no matter how insane it may seem. Faber wishes he'd had the courage to do it years ago.
Faber tries to help Montag make plans for the future. He reminds Montag that war has recently been declared; Montag had known this, but hasn't really had time to think about it. Montag says he plans to keep running. He gives his money to Faber, telling him to use it, since he himself may be dead by the next day.
Faber advises Montag to follow the river out into the country, and then, if he can, to find and follow the old railroad tracks. The railroads are abandoned now (since everyone uses airplanes), but it's said that some elderly intellectuals live in hobo camps along the rails -- "they say there's lots of old Harvard degrees on the trails between here and Los Angeles." Faber himself plans to catch a five A.M. bus out to St. Louis, to meet with a retired printer there and put Montag's money to use copying books. After that, he will also flee into the open countryside.
They turn on Faber's (very small) portable TV to check the status of the hunt. From the TV announcer, the two discover that the chase to find Montag is still in full force. Another Mechanical Hound has been brought in from another district, and the TV cameras will follow the hunt as the Hound tracks down and kills Montag.
Part 3 (IV)
Montag imagines himself staying comfortably in Faber's house, watching the chase on the tiny screen as it gets closer and closer to where he is, until eventually, he would watch the Hound killing him on the TV screen. But, of course, he decides not to do this. Instead, he tells Faber to burn all the things in the house that Montag touched, to wipe down the surfaces with alcohol, and wash down his sidewalks with lawn sprinklers to eliminate the scent of Montag in Faber';s house. Montag and Faber fill a suitcase with some of Faber's old clothes, to use as a scent trap to confuse the Hound, and Montag leaves the house and starts to run toward the river.
As he runs, Montag can see the TV walls flickering inside all the dark houses. Everyone in the city is watching his manhunt on the screen, as the Mechanical Hound sniffs after his scent trail the Mechanical Hound who is chasing him. Fascinated, Montag pauses at a window and watches the Hound on the screen. The Hound is now just outside of Faber's house, and Montag prays to himself, silently, that the Hound will not smell his scent in Faber's house. Finally, he sees the Hound turns away and runs down the street Montag took.
On his Seashell radio, Montag hears the announcer ordering everyone in the neighborhood to go to their doors and windows, on the count of ten, and look out. That way they will be sure to catch Montag. But he has already passed the last row of houses, and just as the countdown reaches zero and doors and windows open up and down the street, Montag reaches the enormous, moving river.
In the river shallows, Montag opens the suitcase and changes into Faber's old clothes, tossing his own away to be swept away by the current to confuse the Hound. Then he lets himself be swept away too. He feels as if he is being swept away from all the noise and light of the city, into a peaceful darkness.
Montag drifts on the river for a long time, feeling his heart beat more slowly and thinking some very strange thoughts. For example, he decides that the sun burns up Time every day, and so there is no need for people like him to burn things. Instead, the time has come for saving things, for preserving them and guarding them safely.
In the depths of night, Montag comes to shore, deep in the country. The land is dark, quiet, and very huge; he can see more stars than he's ever seen before. As he approaches land, Montag has a tranquil vision of finding some farmhouse to sleep in overnight, where maybe some lovely young farm girl will understand what he needs and give him time to rest and something to eat. He visualizes peace as being represented by an apple, a glass of milk, and a pear.
But as soon as Montag steps ashore, he's overwhelmed by how huge and black the country night is. He feels as if he's drowning in too much land, and, mistaking a wandering deer for the Mechanical Hound, is frightened out of his wits. Walking inland, finally he comes across the iron rail of the railroad track. It rings under his feet like the empty pill bottle he kicked under the bed so many nights ago, and, following it in silence, he has a feeling that Clarisse must have walked here too, long ago.
Part 3 (V)
Later, Montag comes to a clearing where he can see several old men -- bearded, but clean and tidy, wearing blue jeans and denim shirts -- sitting around a fire. He watches them talking for a little while, until one looks up and invites him to join them at the fire. These men know his name, and know who he is. They give him a bottle with a strange chemical to drink, and explain it will change the chemical index of his sweat; in half an hour the Hound won't be able to recognize him.
When Montag asks how they know about him, they show him the portable, battery-powered TV on which they have been watching the chase. The chase is still going on, inside the city. Montag doesn't understand how this is possible, but the old men explain it to him: The police hate to look foolish to the TV audience. So when they lost Montag in the river, they selected another victim, at random, from within the city -- some poor eccentric who's out for a walk early in the morning. As the group of men watches, a man whom the announcer claims is "Montag" is "discovered" and killed by the Mechanical Hound. His face is slightly blurred in the TV screen, so no one would be able to tell it wasn't really Montag. The announcer declares that the hunt is over, and the channel changes to another program.
The old men introduce themselves to Montag. The "leader" is named Granger. He is a former sociologist. Most of them used to be professors, literary scholars, or priests. Montag says he doesn't belong with them, because he's just an idiot, but Granger assures him they've all made the same kind of mistakes -- good mistakes, to Granger.
Granger explains that these old men form part of a very loose, semi-secret, very informal nation-wide network. These people are "libraries" -- they are, themselves, books! Each of them has memorized a book or two, and now they just keep them inside their heads, living quietly and peacefully out in the country and waiting for the culture to change so that the books can be written down again. The police don't hassle them, because they don't have any real books with them; some of their members live in small towns, which will remain safe even if a war comes. They plan to pass on the knowledge to their children, if they themselves aren't able to make change within their lifetime. They stay quiet and harmless, not trying to foment revolution, and they're always reminding themselves that they are no more special than anybody else. They
re just old men with books in their heads.
Montag is astonished, but the men laugh and remind him, "Don't judge a book by its cover." They are all the same -- they consider themselves simply "dust jackets": They are the books, now! Granger says he himself is Plato's Republic, while a man named Mr. Simmons is Marcus Aurelius, another is Jonathan Swift, another is Buddha and another Abraham Lincoln -- and they are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as well. Montag tells them he himself has learned part of the Book of Ecclesiastes -- the book with the "lilies" he was trying to read on the subway -- but he can't remember it any more. But Granger reassures him that a book, once read, never really disappears, and they have methods for refreshing people's memories.
Right now, Granger says, this network of old men has a very unpleasant job: they are waiting for the coming war to start, and to end as quickly as possible. They hope that, in the tumult and renovation that will have to come afterward, there will be room for their memories of books to be heard and written again. But nobody can really do anything yet. All the old men can do tonight is wait -- and move a little farther down the river.
Part 3 (VI)
Montag sits all night with the old men, watching the distant glow of the city. Overhead they hear the shriek of jet planes leaving the city. Montag, looking back, remembers Mildred, but can't eel much of anything for her. Granger tells Montag about his own grandfather, whom he remembers well: this man was a sculptor, and when he died, Granger cried for all the things he would never do again -- sculpt wood, hold a homing pigeon, tell a joke. Montag realizes that he never really saw Mildred do much of anything.
Granger says that everybody needs to leave something behind in the world. He quotes his grandfather, who used to say that the only really important thing was to touch something and change it, so that the change will last in the world -- a house, a garden, a sculpture, a child, a book. What his grandfather changed, Granger explains, was Granger himself: his grandfather's fingerprints would be there, on his brain, if anyone could open up his head to look. "Stuff your eyes with wonder," his grandfather used to say, "live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made in factories."
As Montag listens to Granger talk -- suddenly -- the war appears. Enemy fighter planes appear over the distant city, drop their bombs, and disappear again, faster than sound. As Montag understand what is about to happen, he feels as if he wants to warn Clarisse, Faber, and Mildred to get out of the city. But then he remembers that Clarisse is already dead, and Faber has left the city -- he is already on a bus, somewhere out in the countryside. As for Mildred, Montag imagines her in her hotel room, watching the talking TV walls as the bombs approach. And he has the horrible feeling that, if the TV stations disappear the instant before the bombs hit the buildings, Mildred's last sight will be of her own reflection in the suddenly dead screen of the wall-TV. The emptiness of her own face would be enough to cause her to scream in terror.
The city is thrown into the air by the explosion, and a wind knocks down the men watching in the countryside. Lying in the dust, the words of Book of Ecclesiastes begin to come back to Montag, and he starts to feel that he will find what he needs in the coming future. Finally, after what seems like ages, the dust settles and, bruised and battered, the men begin to get up again. The city is flat, reduced to dust. The men decide to cook something to eat -- they fry bacon in a pan -- and then walk upriver, toward the city, to see if they can be of use.
Looking into the cooking fire, Granger quietly begins to talk about the Phoenix, a mythical bird that dies in fire and reincarnated itself every thousand years. He says the Phoenix was a lot like human beings, but the difference is that human beings can learn: in every generation, a few more people remember the errors of the one before, and maybe eventually they'll get to the point where people won't kill themselves any more. Then he reminds them all that they are going to be meeting a lot of lonely people in the days and years to come, and that they must all remember that they aren't particularly important. All they are there to do is remember, and maybe someday that will help people. maybe, someday, it will help them make sure that war doesn't happen again.
They finish eating the bacon, put out the fire, and begin their long walk upstream. Montag goes with them, but glances downriver and decides that someday, perhaps in a year, he will come back to visit the people on the farms and find out how things are with the,. But for right now, he will stay with these men; and later in the day, they will probably begin to talk, to share their thoughts and the books they have in their heads. Montag thinks about what he will share with them, and decides on a quotation from Ecclesiastes:
"And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the trees were for the healing of the nations."
With that thought in mind, he continues walking, among the old men, toward the distant city.