Overall Summary The book starts with an incident in which Montag meets Clarisse McClellan. Montag is fireman who destroys books for a living. He was walking home from work one day when the young Clarisse approaches him and introduces herself. She is the complete opposite if anyone Montag has ever met. She is young pretty and energetic. But more importantly she converses with him about things that he has never thought of. Her nature fascinates him because she ponders upon things such as happiness, love, and the contents of the books that he burns. The next morning Montag tries to discuss about what happened the night before, but his wife is uninterested in any type of discussion. She avoids Montag’s questions and instead focuses on the new scripts she has …show more content…
Because of this encounter Montag realizes that the hound doesn’t like him, a point that he quickly points out to his fellow fireman, Captain Beatty. One day at the fire station, the firemen received a call that an old woman has stashed books in her house. The firemen raced to her home began destroying the contraband. Montag urges the woman to leave the house because the entire home will be destroyed, but she refuses to leave her precious books. The home along with the old woman and her books is set on fire but not before Montag steals one of the books. Later that same night Montag discovers from Millie that Clarisse was killed in an automobile accident by a hit and run driver. Montag decides to call in sick to work the next day, but he is surprised by a visit from Beatty. Somehow Beatty knows that Montag is keeping a book and he is interested in reading it. Beatty converses at great length with Montag tells him that every fireman gets the itch to read a book at some point in his career. Upon reaching Faber’s house Montag is greeted by the old man with fear. Faber worries that Montag has come to burn his books and home, but he is quickly pacified when he see Montag’s bible and hears that he wants