Montag joins the wanderers

After killing Captain Beatty, destroying his own home, and fleeing the city, Montag reaches the river and escapes the Mechanical Hound by floating downstream and disguising himself with borrowed clothes and whisky. He emerges onto the land, disoriented and exhausted, and follows a rusted railroad track into the forest. There, he sees a fire ahead—not the destructive blaze of his former profession, but a small campfire around which five men sit in silence. The fire is warming, not burning, and its smell is different. Montag approaches warily, and a voice calls out, "All right, you can come out now!" and then, "You're welcome here." He walks slowly toward the fire and the five old men dressed in dark blue denim pants and jackets and dark blue suits. He does not know what to say to them.

Identity and Background of the Wanderers

The leader of the group, Granger, immediately recognizes Montag and offers him coffee and a bitter fluid that will change the chemical index of his perspiration, making him smell like two other people to throw off the Hound. Granger explains that they have watched the chase on a portable battery TV set and figured Montag would wind up south along the river. He introduces the other men: Fred Clement, former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge before it became an Atomic Engineering School; Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West, who did quite a bit for ethics at Columbia University; and Reverend Padover, who lost his flock for his views. Granger himself wrote a book called The Fingers in the Glove; the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society. Each man is a living book, having memorized entire texts to preserve them from destruction. Granger tells Montag, "We're book-burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they'd be found." They keep the knowledge in their heads, where no one can see or suspect it. Montag is stunned: "It can't be," he says, and Granger replies, "It is."

Montag's Integration and New Role

Montag initially protests, "I don't belong with you. I've been an idiot all the way." Granger reassures him: "We're used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here." When Montag admits he has nothing to offer—he thought he had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but has forgotten even that—Granger smiles and says, "Better than all right; perfect!" He tells Montag that if anything should happen to Harris, a man in Youngstown who is the Book of Ecclesiastes, Montag himself becomes that book. "See how important you've become in the last minute!" Granger explains that all of them have photographic memories and have spent a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there, and that they have methods to recall anything that has been read once. Montag is offered the chance to become Plato's Republic, Marcus Aurelius, or any other text; the men introduce themselves as Jonathan Swift, Charles Darwin, Schopenhauer, Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Aristophanes, Mahatma Gandhi, Gautama Buddha, Confucius, Thomas Love Peacock, Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Lincoln, and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Group's Philosophy and Purpose

Granger explains that their organization is flexible, loose, and fragmentary. Some have had plastic surgery on their faces and fingerprints. They are waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. "We're not out to incite or anger anyone yet. For if we are destroyed, the knowledge is dead, perhaps for good." They plan to pass the books on to their children by word of mouth, and let their children wait on the other people. "A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time." Granger emphasizes that they are nothing more than dust-jackets for books, of no significance otherwise. Some live in small towns: Chapter One of Thoreau's Walden in Green River, Chapter Two in Willow Farm, Maine. There is a town in Maryland of only twenty-seven people that is the complete essays of Bertrand Russell. When the war is over, the books can be written again, the people will be called in one by one to recite what they know, and they will set it up in type until another Dark Age, when they might have to do the whole damn thing over again. "But that's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing."

The Bombing and the New Dawn

As the group moves downstream, the war begins and ends in an instant. The city is bombed and destroyed. Montag, lying flat, remembers part of Ecclesiastes and Revelation, and recites the words perfectly. After the bombing, the men gather around a new fire. Granger cooks bacon and speaks of the Phoenix, a mythical bird that burns itself up and is born again. "We've got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we've done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day we'll stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them." They eat, put out the fire, and begin walking north. Montag finds himself leading, with the others falling in behind him. He looks at the river and the sky and the rusting track, and thinks of the long morning's walk until noon. The men are silent because there is everything to think about and much to remember. Montag feels the slow stir of words, the slow simmer, and knows that when it is his turn, he will offer something from Ecclesiastes: "To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak." And he remembers the final verse: "And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." He thinks, "Yes, that's the one I'll save for noon. For noon... When we reach the city."