Montag had been a fireman for ten years: he knew the pleasure of the midnight runs, the fire trucks screaming through the dark, the clean small of the kerosene and the joy of watching the books consumed by flames. And then, one night, he encountered an old lady who refused to leave her house when the firemen came to burn her books. And he met the girl Clarisse who knew something of the past, when there were no informers and people were not afraid. And that was the beginning of Montag's doubt about himself and the society he lived in. From then on, Montag was an enemy of the "normal" world, a fugitive in the inferno, pursued implacably by the authorities, stalked by the Mechanical Hound....
