Summary:

Montag, a fireman who burns books and the houses with them, meets Clarisse McClellan who shows him how to think for himself and not how the government wants him to think.  His wife Mildred tries to kill herself and forgets about it and a war is on its way.  The Mechanical Hound does not like Montag for some reason.  Montag burns a house with a woman in it and shortly after he finds out that Clarisse was killed in a car accident.

Analysis:

Montag is a fireman who burns books and the houses that hold them.  Burning books and houses is a theme in Fahrenheit 451.  Their entire society is based upon the idea that books are bad.  The government thinks that if people read books it will tear apart their society.  They think that people will be distraught or disturbed if they read certain books.  This is explained when Captain Beatty says, “Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with.  That way lies melancholy.” (pg. 61).  All books that require thought are banned from being read or even owned.  People who are caught owning books are arrested and their houses and books are burned.  Montag believes that this way of life is good, until he meets Clarisse McClellan who is seventeen and crazy.  She shows him what it is like to have free thoughts.  She teaches him in a few simple minutes that there is more to life than just burning books and speeding at 100 miles per hour and reading digests.  She helps him to figure out for himself that he is unhappy with his life.  Montag realizes that it is wrong to burn books and that there is something more to them that the government lets the people see.  Montag’s wife, Mildred, is completely different from him.  She is completely content with the fact that she is brainless and she does not do anything with her life.  Mildred also does not wish to have children, while Montag would love to.  Mildred tries to kill herself with a bottle of pills.  Apparently she is mentally ill and does not know when to stop.  Montag tries to convince her that she is crazy and she is not actually taking her life seriously.  Clarisse helps Montag to see that he does not love his wife.  The thing about Clarisse is that she says such simple things that trigger the most intricate and complex methods of thinking.  She asks Montag in the beginning of the novel if he is happy.  She merely says three words to him and walks away.  This gets Montag thinking about this for the next two or three pages.  And it was all because she asked him a simple question.  Clarisse is exactly the kind of person Ray Bradbury wants people to be.  Clarisse is a free thinker.  She does not let anybody tell her what to think or what opinion to support.  She, in all likelihood, read numerous books before she died.  The Mechanical Hound does not “like” Montag.  The Mechanical Hound is clearly a symbol of enforcement of the law.  The Mechanical Hound is something that is programmed to hunt people who are breaking rules based on chemicals that are programmed into its “brain.”  For some reason or other, it is programmed to dislike Montag.  Montag burns a house with a woman who is still in it.  Normally, when Montag went to burn houses, the people were already out of the house, so it did not matter that it was burning down because they were just burning items (illegal items, to be precise) and not people.  The narrator tells the reader about this when it is written, “You weren’t hurting anyone, you were only hurting things!  And since things really couldn’t be hurt…things don’t scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later.” (pg.36-37).  When Montag finds out that Clarisse is dead, he is distraught.  He is in shock.  He believed she was not going to die when he knew her.  Montag is sad because the person who made him happy and thoughtful and observant was dead.  Of course, Mildred did not care because she had no heart.  Mildred was exactly the type of person to hate a person like Clarisse who tries to defy the system.  Montag celebrated her.  He encouraged her activities for all the time he knew her (although, he did not do it outwardly).