The novel opens as Guy Montag sets a house ablaze. He’s a 30-year-old fireman whose job is to burn books in his nameless North American hometown that has banned most literature. It’s a job he does with unquestioning satisfaction: “His eyes [were] all orange flame with the thought of what came next” as he ignited the house “in a gorging fire” (4). Montag completes his task and returns to the town firehouse to shower before the end of his shift.

Montag home on “the silent, air-propelled train” (4), reaching his neighborhood in the early hours of the morning. Montag suspects someone’s watching him. When he encounters a teenage girl on the sidewalk around the corner from his apartment, it confirms his suspicions. Montag is taken aback by the girl’s appearance, “[her] eyes, so dark and shining and alive” (5). She is Clarisse McClellan, the teenage daughter of his new neighbors.

Clarisse asks Montag if she can walk with him and engages him in conversation. She questions him on his occupation and the origins of his work: “Do you ever read any of the books you burn?” (6) Clarisse makes it known that she’s more interested in people and nature than technology, and while Montag finds her questions unsettling, he’s strangely drawn to her.