Montag decides to risk revealing that he has a book in order to share a poem first with Mildred, his wife, and then later with her and some of her friends who are visitors in their home. He chooses a serious poem about love, responsibility, and war, intending to shake them out of their passive reverie. Although he knows his behavior is reckless, he has reached the point of no return in regard to participating in his society's repression and hypocrisy.
"Dover Beach" begins with an appeal to love and fidelity, which Montag is about to reject as he places his wife in danger: "Ah, love, let us be true/To one another!"
The poem is appropriate, nonetheless, in calling attention to the illusory nature of reality, which Montag is grappling with every day:
...the world... seemsTo lie before us like a land of dreams,So various, so beautiful, so new....
Montag has come to believe that humanity's dark side is controlling society, so the poem's message of the absence of joy and light, suits his newfound understanding.
They live in a world perennially on the brink of war but are discouraged from facing that. The distractions such as wall TV are no longer enough for Montag; there is no "help for pain...."
He identifies with the internal battles of the poem's characters, who are "Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight," and he is at the point of rejecting the "ignorant armies [that] clash by night."
Montag is a romantic by nature, who wants to believe that being true and love are important in life, and this poem, amidst its bleakness, is giving him courage to move past his confusion and join in "struggle and flight."
https://poets.org/poem/dover-beach
At the end of part two, Montag leaves Faber's house and travels home to find Mildred and her friends watching the parlor wall televisions. Montag, who is furious with society, attempts to shock the superficial women by reading them poetry. When Mildred suggests that Montag read a "funny" poem, Montag reads "Dover Beach." The poem gives a pessimistic description of a faithless world, void of spirituality, hope, justice, and wisdom, which correlates with Bradbury's dystopian society throughout the novel. Matthew Arnold, the poem's author, depicts a dismal world, caught up in "confused alarms of struggle and flight," without any hope for beauty and tranquility in life. The message of the poem is meant to give the reader insight into the emptiness of humanity. Arnold's description of modern society is a bleak depiction of humanity's corrupted nature. The negative images and disturbing message have a dramatic impact on Mrs. Phelps, who begins to cry. She can relate to the empty images throughout the poem, which describe her superficial, sad life.
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