Part 1: The Hearth and the Salamander

Questions

1. What is the weird feeling that Guy Montag gets just before rounding the corner on his way home from work?
2. What is Guy Montag's profession? What is odd about it?
3. How old is Clarisse McClellan?
4. What does Montag discover has happened to his wife when he gets home, and who shows up to help him?
5. According to Clarisse, what does it mean if the dandelion rubs off when you touch it to your chin?
6. Who is Montag's boss at the station?
7. Describe the Hound and its relationship to Guy Montag.
8. What does the old woman do when Montag and his crew try to get her to leave her home?
9. Who are the "relatives" and where do they live?
10. When Montag asks his wife about Clarisse's strange disappearance, what does she say happened?
11. What is wrong with Montag when he wakes up the morning after the incident with the old woman?
12. Why does Montag's boss come over to speak with him?  What story does he tell Montag?
13. What does Mildred find under Montag's pillow?
14. Name two kinds of books that are still allowed.
15. What is inside the ventilator grille and what does Montag decide to do about it?

Answers

1. That someone has just been standing there.  He feels a presence and smells a faint scent.
2. Fireman.  He starts fires instead of puts them out.  He burns books for a living.
3. Seventeen
4. She has overdosed on sleeping pills.  Two men with two machines show up to pump her stomach and clean her blood.  They are plumbers, not medics.
5. You're in love.
6. Captain Beatty
7. It is not a real dog; it is mechanical and has been programmed to hunt certain sets of DNA, like rats and cats.  It injects its prey with a lethal chemical once it catches it.  The Hound growls and threatens Montag, which makes him think that someone at the station has programmed it against him.
8. She refuses to leave and sets fire to herself along with her books.
9. They are interactive TV characters that constantly yell at each other.  They are in the walls of the house, which are actually giant TV screens.  They are ever-present, so Guy and Mildred feel like they are part of the family.
10. She thinks Clarisse is dead, that she was hit by a car
11. He wakes up upset, sick with a fever and flu
12. He comes over because Montag didn't report to work. He knows that Montag is questioning the reason firemen burn books. He tells Montag the whole history of how books came to be banned in America: it was a consequence of radio and television distracting people from books; books were banned to make everyone happy because all books do is cause disagreement and inequality, according to the people in charge.
13. A book (the one he took from the old woman's house)
14. Porn and comic books
15. A stash of books that Montag has been secretly keeping.  He wants to read them and see what is inside them, and he wants his wife to help him.