Guy Montag is a fireman in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. In Montag’s dystopian society, however, firemen do not put out fires: they start them to burn books and the homes containing them.
Montag begins the novel as a loyal, unquestioning employee who takes pride in his work. His encounters with his curious young neighbor Clarisse McClellan, followed by a traumatic raid involving a woman who refuses to abandon her books, make him question the society he serves. He secretly begins reading and searching for a way to understand why books are treated as dangerous.
The occupation is central to the novel’s reversal of expectations. Fire traditionally represents rescue and protection, but Bradbury’s firemen enforce conformity by destroying written ideas. The title Fahrenheit 451 refers to the temperature at which paper is popularly said to ignite, though the exact ignition temperature of paper varies with conditions. Montag’s transformation from book burner to rebel drives the story.