"Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires..."
Guy Montag is the protagonist of the classic Ray Bradbury novel
Fahrenheit 451. He is, as the above
blurb points out, a
fireman of an unexpected kind. In the world of Fahrenheit 451, houses are encased in virtually
fireproof plastic shells, making uninentional fires impossible and even
arson difficult. In
Fahrenheit's society,
books are illegal, having been replaced by the senseless television programs that keep the public content.
Montag and the other
firemen are charged with enforcing the book bannings. They rush to houses with illegal books in them and douse them in
kerosene from the firehoses, setting them
ablaze-- at least once with the books' owner inside.
In
Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag is slowly made aware of the society he lives in by a girl whose been taught of how things used to be and a
professor who still holds to the ideas of an educated world. Using
Professor Faber's
ingenuity and his resources as a fireman, Guy barely escapes the firemen and police that have turned to capture him for hiding
books he saved. He meets up with a group of
rogue intellectuals, becoming, in effect, the last copy of the
Bible, to be coerced out of his memory in the future by hypnosis or similar techniques.
As a reference, Gu
i Montag is also the name for the generic
Terran Firebat hero in
StarCraft.