IndexCharacter DescriptionsKey PassageKey Passage ExplanationThe novel begins with a man named Guy Montag who is a firefighter in a futuristic version of America. The only thing is that firefighters start fires instead of putting them out and they start fires if the person living in that house owns books because books are banned and will be burned once discovered. Then he meets Clarisse McClellan, a seventeen-year-old girl who is his neighbor, very talkative, a kind of tree hugger and with slightly strange thoughts compared to everyone else. After talking, Montag returns home to find his wife having overdosed on sleeping pills. Montag starts talking to Clarisse more and more often and during that time he realizes more and more things that upset him because he feels like he hasn't accomplished much in his life. Afterwards, he steals a book from one of the places he burned. He soon realizes that he hasn't seen Clarisse in a few days and discovers that she's gone. Montag gets sick and Beatty comes over, who is his boss, to tell him about the dangers of books, so Montag quickly hides the book under the pillow but when Beatty and Montag talk, Mildred tries to fix the pillow and hears the book. Mildred freaks out and almost confronts him in front of Beatty but Montag yells at her to leave him alone so he won't say anything. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay One day he showed Mildred his stash of books that were stored in the vent and she gets angry and they start reading these books. Montag then met a boy named Fiber who he had met in a park some time ago because he believed he could help him because Faber had told him things that made him think about reading books. Faber agrees to work with Montag to take down the firemen so Montag is given an earpiece. The day after Montag reads poetry to Mildred's friends he goes to burn down a house and when they stop he is at his house and finds Mildred leaving. He soon finds out that his friends have been talking about him and then Mildred has been talking to him too. He is then told to set fire to his house, he then turns to Beatty and sets it on fire and soon the mechanical hound begins chasing him. He then goes to Faber's house but then goes out to the outskirts of town near a river and meets a secret society of people like him and Faber called Deadheads. Then the city gets bombed and everyone dies except this secret society, so they start rebuilding a life where books are free. The theme of this book is Distraction versus Happiness because people were always distracted and that's why cars drove faster, there were no gardens, there were no porches and the furniture wasn't comfortable so people got up and were more active so you don't think about things outside the box. These people who lived that way were never happy but they never knew it. Happy people were a kind of outcasts who broke the rules by thinking more deeply or feeling more intensely than Clarisse McClellan and her uncle should have liked. Character Descriptions Guy Montag: Open-minded Clarisse told him things he could report but he didn't and when she told him he should try something he'd like, "'Did you look at the elongated billboards like I told you? ' 'I think so. Yes.' Clarisse McClellan: Curious She likes to think differently than others or wonder about things, 'I bet I know something else you don't. There's dew on the grass in the morning.' Beatty: Passionate he's passionate but not in the sense of being passionate about defeating the system, he's passionate about his work and he is”.