Guy Montag is a fireman. Firemen, it is rumoured, long ago used to put out fires, but now, they the start them. Smelling of kerosene, wearing his helmet emblazoned with 451, the temperature in Fahrenheit at which paper burns, he answers the alarms and races to do his duty. His duty is not to save lives. It's not to calm fires, extinguish the flames. His job is to burn books, and their owners and homes if needs be.
America is rich. The rest of the world is at war. No-one really cares. They immerse themselves in the telewalls that broadcasts shows, sensationalised news, clips at breakneck speed designed to disengage, confuse, hypnotise citizens into a disinterested stupor. Relationships are muted, the 'family' have become the characters in the walls.
One night Montag meets Clarisse. She is alive. Really alive. She tastes the rain, she lives in the slow lane of life and so still sees the colours of flowers, blades of grass. The world is whizzing past most in their high speed racers, flowers and grass simply become a blur. Clarisse wakes Montag up. Then Clarisse disappears.
Montag starts to steal books. He's risking his life, his home, his wife's life. But he's drawn to them. It is his undoing and his making.
The alarm is called on Montag, the salamander is out, this time destination: Montag's. In a split second his life changes as his destiny crystallises. He is suddenly on the run from everyone and anyone he knows, hunted by the mechanical hound who is programmed with his scent. The chase is streamed live across all of the telewalls in the city. He is a fugitive. Everyone is searching for him. Shadows are useless hiding places when your enemy is locked onto your scent.
Montag escapes downstream and joins up with the Harvards.
The 'Harvards' are the intellectual outcasts, living homeless on the disused railway lines. Their knowledge is dangerous and what makes them outcasts. To possess a book would mean death. So they each memorise a book, word for word, chapter by chapter. Then burn the book. They become the book. Collectively they are the world's library.
The war continues is silent rages. Bombs fall and flatten the city.
The Harvards are waiting for the world to stop its madness. When the world is ready again, they will help them re-write the classics.
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