Plot Summary

Guy Montag is a fireman. Instead of putting out fires, however, he starts them. Whenever his team is called out to a place where there are books, their job is to burn any and every trace of the knowledge that was found there. Guy never really thought much of why books were so bad that they had to be burned, but there was always some curiosity nagging at him. One day, his neighbor Clarisse opens his mind up to the realistic world. He realizes that he is not really happy with his life, and that people are not living their lives the way they should be. On one of his calls, he has to set fire to a building that houses a woman who owns many books. She decides she would rather burn with the books than be taken away from them. Guy snatches a book from her building, and finally begins reading some of the other books he has taken over the years. He asks a man he had met a year earlier, professor Faber, for advice on what the words of books mean. Faber shows him how the loss of intellect in books caused the downfall of society. Together, and with the help of many other intellect outcasts, they will try to reinsert books back into society, therefore bringing knowledge and understanding back to the people.

Setting

Fahrenheit 451 is set sometime in the future, although the approximate date is never specified. In the United States, humans have had a great downfall in intellect, and have lost their thirst for knowledge. People hardly care about their own safety or the safety of others. No one every actually does any critical thinking for themselves. They drive cars at 100 miles an hour, sometimes even trying to hit other people. They murder each other for fun. Often people accidentally kill themselves because they think they are invincible. Nobody can even go to sleep without having some sort of technology stream endless, mindless entertainment to them. Libraries, Colleges, and other places of learning have been made obsolete. Professors, historians, and philosophers are outcasts to society. Books are considered dangerous, and are burned by firemen. At least all of the buildings have been fireproofed. All the while, the USA is at war, and society thinks it is just some fun form of entertainment.