SUMMARY

The novel takes place in an unnamed futuristic city where technology has transformed ths society into a land of virtual reality and ultra-futurism. In Montag’s world, firemen start fires rather than putting them out and they wear the number "451" on their uniforms because that is the temperature at which books burn.

Books are illegal, no one in the society should be thinking. Mankind has become lazy and stupid because of the excesses of technology.

Fictional creation like the Mechanical Hound, is designed to track and kill violators of the law once it has been programmed with their scent. Houses have built-in alarms that ring when someone has a book in his possession, alerting the firemen to go there and begin burning. Also, the houses are fireproofted and firemen start fires than to put them out.

Montag meets a young girl named Clarisse, who makes him wonder about life. This newfound curiosity gets Montag into trouble when he takes an interest in reading the books that he's supposed to burn. Beatty found out and forced Montag to burn his whole house down. To save himself, Montag kills the fire chief and escapes the city.

Montag met a group of renegade intellectuals, led by a man named Granger, who welcome him. Granger tells Montag how the men in his camp have each memorized literary works so that someday, when it is safe to do so, they can again print books, recreating them from memory. The men went back to the city to help rebuild a society that has destroyed itself.