The Hearth and the Salamander
Guy Montag, the main character, is a firefighter. A firefighter is a type of police officer. Reading books is illegal, and a firefighter burns the books and house of anyone who reads them.
Montag comes home from a day of burning books when he meets his new neighbor, Clarisse McCleallan, who tells him that she is seventeen and crazy. She continues on to talk to him about her peculiar family who actually talk to one another. At first, all of Clarisse's questions and comments make Montag nervous and he politely laughs at everything that she says. When they reach Montag's house, Clarisse abruptly asks Montag if he is happy, but before Montag can answer Clarisse goes into her house.
Montag is greatly troubled by this question and ponders on it for awhile. Then as he enters his bedroom, he realizes that he is not happy.
Upon entering his room, Montag kicks an empty pill bottle which had been fully filled before. He realizes that Mildred, his wife, had overdosed on sleeping pills, and he calls an emergency hospital. To Montag's surprise two men arrive with two machines, one to replace Mildred's blood and the other to get all the medication out of her stomach. Montag wonders why they were sent instead of a medical doctor. The two men say that there are so many people who overdose on pills that they just built machines to do the work of a doctor. All they need is two operators for the machines. Then, the two men leave when they get a call on their seashell that someone else overdosed.
When Montag wakes up, Mildred is not in bed. Montag runs down the stairs and finds Mildred sitting at the table eating breakfast. Mildred does not remember that she overdosed the night before, she does not have any recollection of the night before at all.
Montag, who has had enough of his wife, leaves the house. He sees Clarisse and goes over to talk to her, she is rubbing a dandelion under her chin. She tells Montag that rubbing a dandelion under your chin is a way to tell if you are in love. Montag tries it and becomes very upset when he discovers that he is not in love with anyone according to the dandelion test. Clarisse then says that she must get going because she has an appointment with a psychiatrist.
Montag arrives at work, and he stops for a moment at the mechanical Hound's cage. It growls and reaches toward Montag with a paralyzing needle. Montag tells his fire captain that he thinks the Hound does not like him. His captain tells him that the Hound does not like anyone and then asks him if he has a guilty conscience.
One day on Montag's way to work, Clarisse, who walks with him to work every day, does not show up. He thinks about waiting to give her more time to show up, but he is already late for work. At work, Montag asks the other firefighters a question that Clarisse once asked him. "Did firefighters use to prevent fires instead of starting them?" All of the firefighters laugh at Montag and tell him that firefighters always used to start fires. Then the fire alarm goes off and all the firefighters drive off to burn a house.
At the house, Montag is surprised when he finds that a woman is there. Usually, the person who owns the books has already been taken from the house by the police officers, but today she was there. Montag, going into the house, is bombarded with books and he looks at one as it falls onto him. He reads a line in the book and feeling extremely guilty Montag hurriedly places the book under his shirt and runs back down the stairs. In the kitchen, the firefighters are trying to convince the woman who owns the house to leave, but she is refusing. Montag goes to her and tries to convince her as the other firefighters pour kerosene over all of the books. When the woman pulls out a kitchen match all the firefighters back out of the house. The woman burns her house, her books, and herself before Captain Beatty can light the house on fire.
In the middle of the night, both Mildred and Montag are awake when Mildred remembers to tell Montag something. She tells him that Clarisse McCleallan died four days ago. Clarisse was hit by a car, and Mildred forgot to tell Montag.
In the morning, Montag tells Mildred that he is not feeling well, and that she should call Captain Beatty and tell him that he is sick. Mildred and Montag argue for a few moments before they realize that Captain Beatty has arrived. Captain Beatty tells him that every firefighter gets to this point in his career, and proceeds to tell Montag the "true" history of the country and the fireman. He tells Montag that people did use to read books, and that they enjoyed them. Then, electronics came along and everything was shortened, because no one had the attention span to read books anymore. So, publishers shortened books to 15 pages, then one paged stories, and then they were just three paragraphed columns on a newspaper article. Captain Beatty continues to tell Montag that whatever authors wrote, someone would find a way to be offended by it. So, the critics started shunning books, and people followed suit. Schools were shut down, and publishing agencies. The people were the ones who first banned books. It was not the goverment, but it was the people.
After Captain Beatty leaves, Montag gets the sudden urge to show Mildred something. He pulls back a grate in the wall and takes out around 20 books which he lays down at Mildred's feet. Mildred is horrified, and Montag has to calm her down. He tells her that they will just read a little bit of each book and see if Captin Beatty was right with books being full of nonsense. If Cpatain Beatty is right, then Mildred and him will burn the books in their incinerator together.
They sit down and begin to read.