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Montag Encounters Clarisse
Montag meets a teenage girl named Clarisse who introduces him to a new perspective on society and their world. -
Mildred Tries to Overdose
Montag's wife tries to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills. He comes home to find her lying on the bed and calls the hospital who have workers come and pump her stomach -
Elderly Woman Burns With Her Books
While the firemen are out on the job coming to burn down a house, they witness the owner of the house, an elderly woman, choose to burn with her books instead of escaping the home. This leads Montag to feel a little guilty about his job and to question what could be so important about books that someone would rather take their own life than live without them. -
Montag Steals His First Book
While in the midst of burning down the house, Montag catches a book and without thinking sneaks it into his coat and takes it home with him. -
Clarisse Disappears
Montag had not seen Clarisse for a couple of days and wondered what happened to her. He asked Mildred if she knew anything and finds out that her family moved away and that she thinks Clarisse was hit by a car and killed. -
Beatty Visits Montag
Montag feels sick the next morning and is visited by Captain Beatty, who seems knowing of what Montag has done without stating it. He tells Montag the history of books and literature in the previous society and explains how books were burned because they created too much controversy and people were more comfortable enjoying matters of only cheerful and simple concepts. He also reveals that the firemen have been suspicious of Clarisse's family for a while now because of their odd behavior. -
Montag Seeks Faber's Help
Montag calls Faber, an elderly man that he met a year ago and also the only person he knows who keeps books and knows about their history. He begins asking Faber about the books as he changes his mind about being a firemen, once a job that made him happy. -
The Seashell
Faber gives Montag a Seashell device to keep in his ear so that he can communicate with Montag as they plan to start a revolution. -
Causing a Scene on the Subway
While on his way to Faber's, Montag is trying to memorize verses from the Bible he took, but has trouble focusing because a commercial playing on the subway is making too much noise. This part of the book is very symbolic because it represents how his society only wants the citizens to focus on materialistic things rather than more profound ideas. -
Montag Reads to Mildred and Her Friends
One night when Mildred has her friends over, Montag tries to read to them from a book. They are confused and some even outraged, and Mildred tries to cover up her husband's actions by saying that it is part of his job to take home one book a year for the purpose of proving how silly books were. Faber tries to tell him to go along with Mildred's lie, but Montag makes the mistake of refusing and continues to read which upsets Mildred's friends even more. -
Montag Returns to the Job
Montag comes in to the firestation the next day and surrenders one of his books to Beatty, who goes on to make a point about why books were better left burned, ironically quoting from books he has read to support his claim. The alarm calls them to their next job, which at Montag's shock is his house. Montag sees Mildred leave with her bags in a hurry. Then Beatty forces Montag to burn his house down and "clean up his mess." -
Showdown Between Montag and Beatty (cont'd)
oks he hid and avoid a police car who he believed to be after him. -
Showdown Between Montag and Beatty
After burning his house to ashes, Beatty declared Montag under arrest. He notices the Seashell in Montag's ear that Faber has been talking to him through the whole time and proclaims to track down the person on the other end. He proceeds to taunt Montag with more literary quotations, which pushes Montag to the limit as he uses his flamethrower to set Beatty on fire, as he does to the rest of the firemen. The Hound bites his leg leaving it paralyzed as Montag stumbles to dig up the rest of the bo -
Montag Seeks Faber's Help (Part 2)
The police are now after Montag and he is all over the news. Faber advises him to get to the railroad and follow its tracks until he finds a group of runaways in the woods that also believe in the power of books. -
Montag and the Runaways
Montag reaches the band of runaways in the forest that Faber told him about. They welcome him and watch the news on a portable television which reveals a random man the newscasters claim to be Montag being captured and killed. Granger, one of the runaways, explains to Montag their method of memorizing text from books in the hopes that they will be brought back into society, even it takes them generations upon generations of passing on what they have memorized. As they get up and start to walk an -
Montag and the Runaways (cont'd)
d relocate their camp, jets fly overhead and drop a couple of bombs. It is in this moment that Montag remembers the things he was trying to remember before, like where he met Mildred and the text he was trying to memorize from the Book of Ecclesiastes.