t contain them and from time to time the people who read them. The temperature at which the paper out of which books are made is 451 degrees Fahrenheit.
This is a society that achieves cohesion through mass-media saturation. It is a society under constant threat of atomic war, as the bombers in the air constantly illustrate and as the television ceaselessly proclaims. Otherwise technology-driven television is an interactive experience for the viewer. Montag's curiosity about the content of the books he burns grows because of an encounter with a teenager whose natural curiosity intrigues him, and his crisis is fueled in particular when he watches an old woman deliberately incinerate herself after watching the firemen drench her books and house with kerosene (Bradbury 38-39). He takes one book and soon is reading constantly. He is also found out, of course, for technology is so advanced that the mechanical "Hound" at the firehouse can sense his stress level. Equally perceptive is Captain Beatty, who can remember civilization before books were banned and who recognizes in Montag's attitude the signs of a reader. Besides, Montag has begun to question the work he has loved for so long, and in conversations with Beatty, who continually "baits" Montag about his book curiosity. As Beatty remarks of the case of a sane man who was committed to an asylum after his book-filled house was burned: "Any man's insane who thinks he can fool the Government and us" (Bradbury 33).
Farenheit 451 is a portrait of a society that is insane and that has obliterated its collective memory by obliterating text. A
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