In the open there is a girl walking on a road and one gets the impression that she is exposed and perhaps too carefree. The fireman is all too curious about how she and her family can be different from the rest. This is the opening setting to Fahrenheit 451, the since fiction bestseller that put Ray Bradbury on the list of sought after writers.
This opening sets the stage for the fireman's discontent, at the beginning Montag can only see himself as being restricted and unhappy but he it is not apparent why he is so.
The reader can see outside the bubble that he is living in though thanks to way the author wrote and of course he did not have to spell out the causes of discontent. The fireman lived in a sterile world which probably affected his wife so that even she could not see the root of the malaise. So she popped some pills and had her stomach pumped clean without even remembering why.
The encounter with the girl who calls herself crazy at the beginning is essential for the reader to use as a point of reference for the fireman because she refers to what the role of firemen were in the beginning and she also refers to the appreciation of ones senses that have also been eradicated. Indirectly or unknowingly she was referring to the changed society which did not allow freedom of expression and that had to do with reading books. Montag would have to realize that he would be acting contrary to his own will for the story's plot to unravel.
