Fahrenheit 451 is a novel about governmental censorship in the future. In this future world, all printed material with intellectual value is banned. The government organizes firemen to find books and burn them.
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job it is to burn books. One day, he meets a 17-year-old girl named Clarisse. She tells him about a time in the past when books were legal and people could read them without being arrested. The next day, Montag goes to a fire and burns an old lady's house. While setting the fire, he takes a book from the lady's library. When he goes home, he questions himself why he is a fireman and puts the book under his pillow. The following day, he is about to call in sick to work, but Beatty, his captain, comes to his house. Beatty talks to Montag about the history of the firemen and how they used to put out fires that would start by accident. After Beatty leaves, Montag takes books from his air vent that he has been storing over the years and scatters them over the floor, trying to get his wife to read with him.
Later, he decides he wants to fight for the legalization of books. He meets with a friend named Faber who used to be a college professor when books were legal, and decides to create havoc by planting books in firemen's houses and calling in reports. Faber gives Montag an ear radio/microphone so he can determine if Beatty could help them, since he used to read books a lot when they were legal. One day, Beatty gets a report that books are being held at a house. He takes the call with Montag. When he gets to the address on the complaint form, he sees that it is his house and that his wife called in the complaint. Beatty forces him to burn all the belongings in his house and is about to arrest him when Montag turns the flamethrower on Beatty and kills him. After that, a Mechanical Hound, a robot trained to seek and destroy fleeing felons, is sent to kill him.