Guy Montag is a fireman, but in his futuristic society, a fireman's job is to burn books since they are all illegal, and he enjoys his job. "It [is] a pleasure to burn. It [is] special to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." Part 1, pg. 3 Montag lives in a society bent on ultimate entertainment and minimal individual thought. People no longer have conversations or enjoy interaction with one another. Instead, they prefer the company of the characters playing constantly on huge wall televisions or "'parlor walls'" Part 1, pg. 9 in each home. The people of this world are content to submit themselves to a constant stream of media manipulation; if they aren't watching the wall televisions, they are listening to Seashell radios, small radios small enough to fit inside the ear like a hearing-aide. Montag accepts this world without question, never stopping to think that there might be more to life than his job and the various entertainment that society feeds him.
He walks home from the fire station that night satisfied with the evening's work, and as he nears the corner before his house, he slows down and listens because he feels as if someone else is nearby. He's had that feeling at the same part of the sidewalk for the past few nights, and when he turns the corner, he sees a young woman just ahead of him in the moonlight. He says hello to her and she seems to look at him as if he is the most interesting thing she's ever seen. They introduce themselves, and she is Clarisse McClellan, an unusual, seventeen-year-old girl whose odd family moves in next door to Montag and his wife, Mildred.
Because she lives next door to him, they walk slowly home together, and Clarisse seems surprised to realize that although Montag is a fireman, she is not afraid of him because he is, after all, just a man. There is something very different about Clarisse and Montag thinks it must be that she spends her time thinking and observing the world around her. Other people her age are racing on the highways where the minimum speed limit is 55 miles per hour, or going to the Fun Parks where they can be constantly entertained. She explains that people think she and her family are crazy because they enjoy talking to one another and because she spends so much time thinking about the world and watching people.
Clarisse is puzzled by Montag because he's not like other firemen. He listens to her and answers her questions, whereas most firemen ignore or threaten her. Montag, in turn, is intrigued by Clarisse because she makes him think about things like whether or not he's happy with his life. The way she looks with her pale face glowing in the moonlit night reminds him of a time when he was a boy and the power went out, so he and his mother had to light one of few remaining candles. He doesn't usually think about the past or anything else, and Clarisse calls to mind memories and questions and things he's not thought of before.
She asks him if houses were always fireproof because she'd heard somewhere that once a fireman's job was to put out fires instead of starting them. Montag denies it because his fireman's handbook says that such a thing is not true. She points out to him that billboards, now 200 feet long so that cars traveling so fast can actually see them, were once only twenty feet long. She tells him that there's dew on the grass in the morning and a man in the moon, and these revelations disturb the fireman because he doesn't know if he already knew any of that or not. Just before his first unusual meeting with Clarisse has ended, she asks him if he's happy. Before he can answer, she runs into her house where her family is sitting up talking with each other, and he's left to answer the question for himself. He tries to dismiss it, but he can't quite push the question away.
He goes into his house to find that Mildred has taken an entire bottle of her sleeping pills. He calls for help, and instead of an ambulance and doctors, two men with machines small enough to fit into suitcases come over and empty her stomach and purify her blood. These overdoses are so common that doctors don't even bother to handle them anymore. Montag is stunned at his wife's suicide attempt and even more so at the way that the two men who come to help treat it as if it's an everyday thing, which it is for them.
When Mildred wakes the next morning, she denies the entire incident and has no memory of her near-death experience. Her indifference bothers Montag, and he realizes that he really is unhappy and that Mildred, although absorbed in her world of wall televisions and entertainment, is also unhappy. They never had kids because they didn't want them, and so Mildred spends her days staring at the wall television and imagines that the people she sees there are her family because she is isolated by the entertainment. She's not the only person who does that. Most of the society considers the TV characters the "relatives." Part 1, pg. 49
Clarisse walks with him the next day and she tells him that she is forced to go to the psychiatrist because people just don't understand why she would want to hike in the forests or collect butterflies or pick flowers. She asks Montag how he became a fireman because she thinks that he doesn't seem like the rest of them ; he tolerates her and the things she talks about, whereas other firemen would just walk away from her. Clarisse's inquiry makes Montag begin to question his work. He starts to act strangely, to ask if firemen hadn't once existed to extinguish fires, to talk about what it must be like to have firemen come in and destroy your home. All of his questions and vocal reflections of the job of a fireman make his boss, Capt. Beatty, suspicious that Montag must be up to something.
For a while Clarisse is a constant sight each time he goes outside. Sometimes she leaves him little gifts of chestnuts, flowers, or autumn leaves on his porch, and other times he sees her doing something like sitting on the lawn and knitting a sweater. Each time he goes to work, she walks him to the corner, but then Clarisse doesn't show up to walk with Montag one day and he feels off-balance because of it. He feels that something's wrong, and he wonders what has happened to her. Four days pass and still no sign of Clarisse. Montag is on edge. That night at work, he and the firemen are called to burn books at an old woman's house, and the old woman has not been taken away by the police as is the procedure. Montag and the others are forced to face the person whose home they are destroying, and it (affects?) Montag. But more than anything else, he is shaken by the fact that she won't leave her home when they've soaked the illegal books with kerosene, and what's more, she herself lights the match that destroys her home. Montag tries to talk her out of it, but she won't leave her home, and she is engulfed in the flames when her books burn. Without realizing what he has done, Montag slips one of the books into his jacket and takes it with him when they leave. He wants to understand why someone would be willing to die for these objects.
That night he tries to explain to Mildred what he's seen, but she has her Seashell radio in her ear. While he tries to talk to her, he thinks that his wife is empty, and so is he. From her trance-like state, she hears Montag mention that he hasn't seen Clarisse and she remembers that Clarisse was run over by a car four days ago and her family has moved out. This knowledge added to Montag's guilt and fear over stealing a book make him feel so ill that he plans to stay home from work the next day. He considers finding a different job. Before he falls asleep, he thinks he hears the sound of the Mechanical Hound from the fire station searching for him outside. The Mechanical Hound is a robot with eight legs and a lethal needle with which it injects morphine or procaine into its victims. Montag is convinced that the Hound has been programmed to dislike the combination of amino acids and alkalines in his skin, so the feeling that the Hound is outside his home makes Montag even more uneasy.
The next morning, while he's in bed with the stolen book hidden beneath his pillow, he tells Mildred that he's thinking about quitting his job for a while. She's furious that he would consider giving up the work that pays for her wall televisions and entertainment. She doesn't understand how one old woman and her books could upset him so much. He insists that "'There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing.'" Part 1, pg. 51 While he's trying to convince her that maybe books are more important than they'd thought and that maybe they don't think about real things anymore, Capt. Beatty comes to visit. Beatty tells Montag that all firemen go through a period of questioning their work, and he explains that the evolution from thought and reflection about the world was replaced by only a desire to be entertained because that was what the people of society chose. Books are now illegal because the people wanted rid of them. They didn't want to think and feel. They didn't want to agonize over taking sides in moral debates or deal with thinking about right and wrong. They just wanted to enjoy, so that's what the government gives them -- freedom from thought and responsibility. Firemen exist to ensure that freedom. Montag realizes that Clarisse and her family felt limited by that freedom, and he doesn't feel comfortable with his job anymore.
While Capt. Beatty talks, Mildred comes in and tries to fluff Montag's pillows, but Montag doesn't want her to because he's got the stolen book hidden beneath his pillow. Mildred keeps fiddling with the pillow and sees the book. For a terrified instant Montag thinks she's going to give him away with Capt. Beatty sitting in the room, but she just leaves. Capt. Beatty knows that Montag has a book, and after his long explanation of the evolution of firemen, he hints that if Montag doesn't burn the stolen book within the next 24 hours, the firemen will come burn it for him. Beatty starts to leave expecting that Montag is feeling well enough to show up to a later shift that night, but Montag says he isn't sure if he's well enough yet. Montag doesn't ever want to go to work again.
As soon as Beatty leaves, Montag shows Mildred the stash of books that he has hidden in the ventilator of their house. She is afraid and shocked that he would put them in such danger. Montag he insists that they at least read some of them to see what's so great about the books before they burn them. Mildred doesn't want to, but she eventually gives in to him and they begin to read.
