"The Illustrated Man"

Paper Summary:

The paper relates that the dominant theme in Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" is how each person reacts to his own personal problems and fate when confronted with new and threatening circumstances. The paper focuses on the way the protagonists in the stories "The Man," "Kaleidoscope" and "The Long Rain" react to a situation in which they know they have no way out and can only depend on themselves and their own inner strength.

From the Paper:

"Ray Bradbury is one of America's best known and popular science fiction authors, having written more than 30 books over the past half century, not to mention numerous short stories, plays and screenplays. In this essay, I am going make an attempt to discuss the overall theme found in Ray Bradbury's collection of short stories, The Illustrated Man, which was originally published in 1951 and has been reprinted many times since ("Ray Bradbury.") The reason I am selecting this angle of approach is that although the issue of technology and its impact on society are a very important part of Bradbury's work, not every story is about technology itself. In most of the stories, technology forms only a backdrop. It also seems that despite some obvious exceptions (such as "The Other Foot") Bradbury's stories are not especially concerned with immediately relevant social issues, although they do deal with how society reacts to threatening events. In fact, it seems to me that what makes Bradbury's work here so interesting is the way he focuses on the effects of new ideas on particular individuals, and I see this as the overriding theme of the anthology."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bradbury, Ray. The Illustrated Man. New York: Avon 1997.
• The Illustrated Man (1969). Internet Movie Database.30 January 2007. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064473.
• "Ray Bradbury." Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 27 January 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury.

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