Montag comes to realize that their inability to discuss the suicide attempt suggests the profound estrangement that exists between them. He discovers that their marriage is in shambles. Neither he nor Millie can remember anything about their past together, and Millie is more interested in her three-wall television family. The TV is another means that Mildred uses to escape reality (and, perhaps, her unhappiness with life and with Montag). She neglects Montag and lavishes her attention instead upon her television relatives. The television family that never says or does anything significant, the high-speed abandon with which she drives their car, and even the overdose of sleeping pills are all indicators for Montag that their life together is meaningless.
For Montag, these discoveries are difficult to express; he is only dimly cognizant of his unhappiness—and Millie’s—when he has the first incident with the Mechanical Hound. In some sense, the Hound’s distrust of Montag—its growl—is a barometer of Montag’s growing unhappiness.
Captain Beatty intuitively senses Montag’s growing discontent with his life and job. Beatty is an intelligent but ultimately cynical man. He is, paradoxically, well-read and is even willing to allow Montag to have some slight curiosity about what the books contain. However, Beatty, as a defender of the state (one who has compromised his morality for social stability), believes that all intellectual curiosity and hunger for knowledge must be quelled for the good of the state—for conformity. He even allows for the perversion of history as it appears in Firemen of America: “Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin. . . ” Beatty can tolerate curiosity about books as long as it doesn’t affect one’s actions. When the curiosity for books begins to affect an individual’s conduct and a person’s ability to conform—as it does Montag’s—the curiosity must be severely punished.
When Montag is called to an unidentified woman’s house “in the ancient part of the city,” he is amazed to find that the woman will not abandon her home or her books. The woman is clearly a martyr, and her martyrdom profoundly affects Montag. Before she is burned, the woman makes a strange yet significant statement: “Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.” Nicholas Ridley, the Bishop of London in the sixteenth century, was an early martyr for the Protestant faith. He was convicted of heresy and sentenced to burn at the stake with a fellow heretic, Hugh Latimer. Latimer’s words to Ridley are the ones that the unidentified woman alludes to before she is set aflame. (Note that a couple visual metaphors for knowledge were traditionally of a woman, sometimes bathed in bright light or holding a burning torch.) Ironically, the woman’s words are prophetic; through her own death by fire, Montag’s discontent drives him to an investigation of what books really are, what they contain, and what fulfillment they offer.
Montag is unable to understand the change that is taking place within him. With a sickening awareness, he realizes that “[a]lways at night the alarm comes. Never by day! Is it because fire is prettier by night? More spectacle, a better show?” He questions why this particular fire call was such a difficult one to make, and he wonders why his hands seem like separate entities, hiding one of the woman’s books under his coat. Her stubborn dignity compels him to discover for himself what is in books.
