Ray Bradbury and the Main Themes Addressed in His Books
Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things. ”-Ray BradburyRay Bradbury is definitely a writer that stands amongst the greatest. His unfailing ability to add close realities to certain scenarios that were completely ahead of his time. Born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois Bradbury was a writer since 1929. Bradbury’s style of writing makes him more distinct than any other writers’ work I have ever had the pleasure of reading. To affect, the molding process that shaped his genius can be identified by anything he has ever experienced, but the key influences discussed in this paper will be the cold war, space/technology, and biblical stories from the Bible. One of the scariest time periods in the US during Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson was the Cold War. Most of today’s youth don’t even know the described experience in those times. In a short article by Stephanie Buck one surveyer responded to the question of the feeling as a child fully aware of the possibility of death from a nuke and he responded with, “For children growing up in the Cold War, mutually assured nuclear destruction literally haunted their dreams. ”
This film uncovered some of the heart wrenching realities of a nuclear fallout: let’s just say this, hiding under a desk is as useless as only getting 30 minutes of sleep every night. Dying from a Nuke was a serious reality, communities and communities alike built bomb shelters in preparation to that scenario. People all over the country had preferences on the way of death, like instant death from the blast, the most popular justification for this was that many didn’t want to suffer from grief for the rest of their life. According to the man, who speaks for most in that time, the Cold War made all of America terrified. Nuclear Warfare heavily influenced the a few short stories like The Highway. The whole premise of the story was about nuclear date. Bradbury writes “It’s come, the atomic war, the end of the world!” The scene is set on a highway, south of the american border, where a man who lives as a farmer with no access to technology meets a driver that is migrating from Mexico due to the war. Bradbury makes the character’s reaction to the whole situation pretty close to what people thought and did in the early 60’s. The main character, Hernando, went to check out the traffic on the Highway, when he noticed that all of the people crossing by had the face of fear carved on. Hernando had that gut feeling that something was off. In his mind he was probably thinking [Why aren’t they taking pictures of me? ] this can be explained by the fact that Hernando lives at a tourist site. Unlike Hernando everyone was running for their lives wondering how they would survive and fought to get to the border. Living through the fear of atomic annihilation obviously gave Bradbury ideas of where to take the story. Atomic Annihilation also took its toll on the short story The Last Night of the World because Bradbury explores what people’s psychology could look like.
A family that was fully aware of what was to come decide what they wanted to do for their last night. “Do you believe in it? . . . yes. . . ” the first identify the fact of the matter and then decided “At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night. . . ” Although the parents talked much of the situation they chose to live in denial. I could just imagine that many families had the same reaction. Living in denial is the easiest way to block out the stresses of a problem, and to just let go must’ve been the best thing to do right? The Cold War holds a powerful position in Bradbury’s Creative Corporation, which moves this onto Technology and Space. New technology and the space race affected some many aspects of the U. S, Randy Kennedy, a writer, from the New York times states in his article that, “The worlds of fashion, furniture, comic books and children’s toys were all profoundly affected, often for the good. ” Essentially themes of Space became a culture, fun, and it had a unique ambiance of Curiosity, adventure, and advancement. Bradbury lived these days, he amongst other millions witnessed magazines, comics, toons, news, discoveries, and launches of the space race. Technology became very rampant as well it started with the little things like an increase in the number of households that has a television, game consoles, the computer mouse, computer memory improvements and the profficent use in motherboards to control electronics. Bradbury saw these things as good but then wondered what would happen when man took the tech too far.
Most of Bradbury’s themes are based on this question specifically.
In Kaleidoscope Ray Bradbury uses this question and writes about the actual effects. A crew of astronauts are traveling space and run into some problems, “The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. ” In that moment the astronauts are absolutely helpless and have no way of getting out of this pickle. The thing that the crew did wrong was rely too much on the technology they had. Surely this crew has many experiences with space travel, but there comes a time when the unexpected happens. Technology is only as perfect as their creators in most scenarios. This factor affects the whole story by cause and effect, after the crash the crew reacts in a negative way and become selfish with the few hours, if any, they have left. It’s amazing how Bradbury chooses the reactions of the characters from the story. Like the theme for for dependence of tech in space travel, Bradbury does the same for technology on Earth. In Fahrenheit 451 the main character arrives home and finds his wife listening to her seashells and laying in bed dead from consuming a bottle of prescribed pills, later a machine is brought to clean her system. Later the wife relies heavily on the walls that basically ran the house. If technology came to the effect of pure depression the world would slowly stop creating new things and die off. Technology is questioned for its effects rather than its benefits and Bradbury measures this outcome diligently. An effect that was quickly identified in his novel was that technology has a close correlation with depression.
Think about it humans typically depend on social interaction with others to stay healthy. If technology makes a person focus on that one thing doesn’t it make us isolated as well? A great observation by many fans is that Bradbury is typically right with his predictions, despite him writing Science Fiction. Religion is a preference that many in this world have. More closely Ray Bradbury’s preference is said by him from an article written by John blake at CNN. He is a “delicatessen religionist” and it ties back to when he was the age of 14. After moving, during the Great Depression, to LA teen Ray Bradbury often visited different religious gatherings like churches, temples and synagogues. After gaining much knowledge of christianity he used some themes to form his own art. It really loved that Bradbury mixes his themes with religious ones, and its effect is that the story makes for a bigger idea, like all his stories I guess. In The Veldt, Bradbury makes it clear that some biblical allusion is fixated toward the ending. It is identified when he writes, “The lions on three sides of them, in the yellow veldt grass, padding through the dry straw, rumbling and roaring through their throats. ” Right now two parents were just thrown into a room that produces living animate realities, in this case the parents were trapped by their kids in the safari with lions in it. This part of the story relates to The book of Daniel when Daniel, a man who was accused of worshiping God, was thrown into the lion’s den. This was done as punishment for his religious crimes, unlike The Veldt daniel survives. The whole allusion is in his writing because of Bradbury’s childhood influences.
The magnitude of the biblical influence definitely farther than just one book, it shows up in The Man. Ray Bradbury writes this short story but instead of having an allusion based paragraph, Bradbury develops the whole story on biblical accounts. Bradbury writes, “ what was his name? . . . It would be different on every planet. . . he healed the sick and comforted the poor. He fought hypocrisy and dirty politics and sat amongst the people. . . ” In this scene a crew of space travelers find planets to visit that are less technologically advanced, the reason being was to impress the inhabitants and be rained with goods and treats. After landing on a random planet the people don’t seem to be impressed at all. In fact it appears that somebody has stole the arrogant captain’s thunder. This person becomes envied by the captain and he shows a serious interest in who the mysterious visitor really is. By the quote it was concluded that the mysterious stranger was in fact Jesus, maybe not name but definitely by identity. In conclusion, every person in the universe was created with a blank slot that was fill through the experiences of life. It was by luck how bradbury turned out and his writing reflects this.
