When Montag meets with Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles, he forgets that they are a good deal like Millie; they are devoted to their television families, they are politically enervated, and they show little interest in the imminent war. Because their husbands are routinely called away to war, the women are unconcerned. War has happened before and it may happen again.
Listening to their empty babble, animated by his rebel posture, and with Faber whispering comfortably in his ear, Montag impulsively shouts, "Let's talk." He begins reading from "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Despite their flippancy and chatter, the women are moved, but again, they do not understand why. Although Mildred makes the choice of what her husband should read, Matthew Arnold's poem typifies Montag's pessimism as he tries to fathom the vapid, purposeless lifestyles of the three women. The poem forces the women to respond — Mrs. Phelps with tears and Mrs. Bowles with anger. The Cheshire catlike smiles that Millie and her friends wear indicate their illusion of happiness. Montag imagines these smiles as burning through the walls of the house. Ironically, smiles should signify joy, but not in this case, just as they did not in Montag's case. However, the smiles of these women are destructive and perhaps evil. Furthermore, Millie and her friends are characterized by fire imagery; they light cigarettes and blow the smoke from their mouths. They all have "sun-fired" hair and "blazing" fingernails. They, like the fleet of firemen, are headed toward their own destruction.
