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60 free Fahrenheit 451 trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in nine-day bursts on rented typewriters in the basement of UCLA's library, and it has been burning in classrooms ever since. This quiz covers the book itself: its three parts, Guy Montag's slow awakening, Clarisse, Mildred and her parlour walls, Captain Beatty's history lesson, Faber's earpiece, the eight-legged Mechanical Hound, the river, the book people and the bombs that end the war in a night. It also covers the story around the story: the short stories and the Galaxy novella it grew from, the fire chief who supplied the temperature, the McCarthy-era fears and Nazi book burnings behind it, the asbestos-bound first edition, the Playboy serialisation, the expurgated 'Bal-Hi' edition Bradbury only discovered in 1979, Truffaut's film with Julie Christie in two roles, the 2018 HBO version, the video game and Michael Moore's borrowed title. Questions run from easy (what the firemen burn) to expert (which two incidents the censored edition rewrote). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the novel, its adaptations and Ray Bradbury, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Ray Bradbury, dystopian novels and banned books quizzes next.
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Q 01In the society of Fahrenheit 451, what do 'firemen' do?
Burn books
Books have been outlawed, and the firemen destroy any that are found.
Q 02What is the first name of Montag, the novel's protagonist?
Guy
He starts loyal to the system, becomes disillusioned, and ends by helping to preserve the books he once burned.
Q 03According to the novel's title page, 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which what happens?
Book paper catches fire
Studies actually put paper's autoignition point anywhere from 424 to 475 °F depending on the paper.
Q 04In what year was Fahrenheit 451 first published?
1953
Bradbury finished the manuscript that year during the Second Red Scare; Ballantine issued it as a paperback in October.
Q 05Fahrenheit 451 grew out of which 1951 novella Bradbury published in Galaxy Science Fiction?
The Fireman
An editor at Ballantine, Stanley Kauffmann, urged him to double it into a full novel.
Q 06Bradbury's short story 'The Pedestrian', a seed of the novel, was inspired by his 1949 run-in with whom?
A police officer
In the story a man is harassed and detained simply for taking a night-time walk while everyone else watches television.
Q 07Bradbury typed the first draft in nine days on rented typewriters in which university's library?
UCLA
The typewriters rented for ten cents per half hour; the second nine-day burst doubled the story to novel length.
Q 08How long was the first draft that Bradbury completed in nine days?
25,000 words
When Ballantine asked him to double it, he went back to the same typing room and added another 25,000 words in another nine days.
Q 09Which era of American politics was Bradbury writing in, deepening his contempt for government overreach?
The McCarthy era
He also cited Nazi book burnings and Stalin's purges, in which 'they burned the authors instead of the books'.
Q 10Bradbury said he was fifteen when horrified by books being burned in the streets of Berlin by whom?
Hitler
He was born in 1920, so that puts the burnings in the Nazis' first year in power.
Q 11What is the title of the novel's first part?
The Hearth and the Salamander
The salamander is the emblem of the firemen and the name of their fire engine.
Q 12What is the title of the novel's second part?
The Sieve and the Sand
It opens with Mildred refusing to go along with Montag's plan to read the hidden books.
Q 13The third and final part of the novel is called what?
Burning Bright
It begins with Beatty ordering Montag to burn down his own house.
Q 21Where has Montag been hiding the books he has stolen over the past year?
In the ceiling
Mildred grabs one and runs for the kitchen incinerator; he stops her and insists they read them first.
Q 22What is the Mechanical Hound?
An eight-legged robotic dog that hunts book hoarders
It lives in the firehouse and can inject its victims with an anaesthetic.
Q 23Who is Captain Beatty?
Montag's fire chief
He explains that people abandoned books for film, television and speed long before the government made burning them official.
Q 14Who is the free-spirited teenage neighbour whose questions make Montag doubt his life?
Clarisse McClellan
She is a month short of her 17th birthday and is sent to therapy for her odd habits, like enjoying nature and conversation.
Q 15How does Clarisse die, according to Mildred?
Hit by a speeding car
The book hints Beatty may have had her killed; the 1966 film keeps her alive with the exiles, an ending Bradbury liked so much he adopted it for his play.
Q 16Montag comes home one night to find his wife Mildred has done what?
Overdosed on sleeping pills
Two technicians pump her stomach and move on to the next overdose; she remembers nothing in the morning.
Q 17What does Mildred call the characters on the giant wall-screens she watches all day?
Her 'family'
When Montag suggests quitting, she panics at the thought of losing the house and the parlour walls.
Q 18What are Mildred's 'Seashell ear-thimbles'?
In-ear radio headphones
They wall her off from her husband; Bradbury said in 2007 that the book is really about how mass media marginalises reading.
Q 19How is Mildred physically described in the novel?
Thin as a praying mantis, hair burnt to brittle straw
The description ends with 'her flesh like white bacon'.
Q 20What does an old woman do when the firemen arrive to destroy her hoard of books?
Lights a match and burns with them
Montag steals a book from her house that night; it turns out to be a Bible.
Q 24What does Beatty reveal about himself when Montag returns to the firehouse?
He was once an enthusiastic reader
In the later stage play, Beatty even shows Montag walls of books left to moulder in his own house.
Q 25Faber, whom Montag turns to for help, used to be what before books were banned?
An English professor
Bradbury noted that Faber is part of the name of a pencil maker, Faber-Castell, and of the publisher Faber and Faber.
Q 26How does Montag force the frightened Faber to help him?
By tearing pages out of the Bible
Faber then gives him a homemade earpiece so he can whisper guidance from afar.
Q 27Which poem does Montag read aloud to Mildred's friends, reducing one of them to tears?
Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold's poem strikes a chord in Mrs Phelps, and the visit ends with the women fleeing.
Q 28Where does the fire truck go when the alarm sounds near the end of Part Two?
Montag's own house
Beatty tells him that his wife and her friends turned him in.
Q 29How does Montag kill Beatty?
With a flamethrower
Escaping, Montag concludes that Beatty wanted to die and had goaded him into it.
Q 30How does Montag finally shake off the second Mechanical Hound sent to hunt him?
He wades into a river and floats downstream
News helicopters follow the hunt to make it a public spectacle; downstream he meets the book people.