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The protagonist, Guy Montag, meets a non-conformist teenage girl from next door.
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Montag talks to his next door neighbor, the teenage girl by the name of Clarisse, and tells her how he perceives her as older than she really is.
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Guy Montag returns to his home to find his wife, Mildred, attempting suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills. Two strange, impersonal men respond to Montag's emergency call and repair Mildred's health.
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Guy Montag perceives the Mechanical Hound at the fire station as having something against him, which Captain Beatty says is impossible.
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Clarisse disappears.
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While playing cards at the firehouse, Guy asks if firemen used to put out fires, as Clarisse claimed earlier. He uses the phrase “once upon a time,” which he once glimpsed in a book before he burned it. In response to this, Captain Beatty gets out the "ru
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The alarm in the firehouse goes off and the firemen burn the books contained in the house of an old woman. For the first time, Guy is in a position where the owner of the books decided to be burned along with their books.
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The next day, Montag asks Mildred to call in sick for him but she refuses. Captain Beatty comes to the Montag house of his own accord and knowingly explains to Montag that all firemen go through the same situation of guilt and questioning the purpose of t
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In his speech, Captain Beatty reveals the rulebook is lying and explains why the job of firemen is still valid otherwise. After Beatty leaves, Montag tries to talk to Mildred about the issue of living both happily and not being ignorant of social reality.
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Montag pours out his books from the ventilator and forces Mildred to read them with him.