The Book People

Montag's neighbor Clarisse asks a devastating question: "Are you happy?" Nobody in Montag's world asks this because happiness has been replaced by stimulation. Montag begins secretly stealing and hiding books, then joins a community of outcasts who have memorized entire books to preserve them after the originals burn.

Each exile carries a complete work in their memory — one person is Plato's Republic, another is Gulliver's Travels, another is the Book of Ecclesiastes. Knowledge lives not in objects but in human minds and communities that choose to remember.