The Illustrated Ray Bradbury. James Arthur Anderson
finds its sole raison d’être in the code of enigmas. This code, again, overlaps some of Genette’s work and will be used only occasionally in my analysis.
The last three codes, the cultural, connotative, and symbolic codes, work together to create character, enhance meaning, and determine theme in a literary work. The cultural code examines the literary work’s explicit and implicit references to the culture in which it was written. Understanding this code enables the reader to view the work as being the product of a particular culture and society, and may expose themes and meaning deemed important by that particular culture. The connotative code schematizes the dominant connotations of the text’s language in regard to character and setting. This code often develops character in traditional stories; in science fiction (and most popular literature), where plot is more important than character, the connotative code often contributes primarily to the work’s overall theme. Finally, the symbolic code assumes that meaning occurs through binary oppositions that create theme through their conflict. The psychoanalytical code, for example, is a specialized symbolic code based on Freud’s theories.
Barthes’ textual code, or metalinguistic code, operates whenever communication speaks of itself—as when a poet writes a poem about poetry, for example. This code occurs whenever “...language is...doubled into two layers of which the first in some ways cap the second....” (Barthes, “Valdemar” 139). This textual code will often expose themes dealing with writing or communication.
Barthes uses his codes to interpret specific literary works (S/Z, “Valdemar”) by dividing the text into random units that he terms “lexias” (S/Z 13) and picking the codes out of each fragmented section. For purposes of my analysis, however, I will not fragment the text, but will demonstrate how the five codes weave their way through the work as a whole.
I intend to use the perspectives of Genette, coupled with Barthes’ hermeneutic and action codes to show how Bradbury has achieved popular success through his ability to create and maintain suspense while keeping the story moving quickly towards its conclusion. This analysis will show how Bradbury uses ellipsis to move quickly from one scene to another in cinematic fashion. I will also demonstrate how Bradbury uses analepses and prolepses to distribute clues to the story’s ending throughout the text and how he produces surprise endings by changing the narrative focus at critical points in the discourse.
Todorov’s ideas on genre can be adduced to suggest that Bradbury should not be classified as a “science fiction” writer at all, since his stories do not fall into a strict science fiction format but have pioneered a new subgenre that rests midway between fantasy and science fiction. When he does base his plot on scientific principles, these are often the laws of psychology and sociology rather than those of chemistry or physics. And even this science is often tempered with fantasy or magic. This marriage of genres has enabled Bradbury to create a more literary type of science-fantasy and has molded speculative fiction into the complex and virtually unclassifiable genre that it is today.
Todorov’s “equations” are also helpful in isolating specific themes in the stories, which I will then examine in more detail by using Barthes’ connotative, symbolic, psychoanalytical, and cultural codes. In particular, we will find oppositions between fantasy and reality, childhood and adulthood, primitiveness and civilization, and creation and destruction repeated in each of the stories. Also, a “code of ambiguity” will emerge that foregrounds structural or thematic uses of irony and reversal.
Finally, I will show that The Illustrated Man contains a textual code that links together the themes from each story. The bipolar oppositions from each story (fantasy/reality, etc.), when woven together in terms of the code of ambiguity and the textual code, create a rich tapestry of meaning that can only be seen once all the stories have been read and understood within the context of the narrative framework for the collection as a whole.
It is necessary here to give a brief synopsis of this framework. The narrator, a young man, is walking along a deserted country road when he meets the Illustrated Man. The Illustrated Man tells his new friend a strange story about his tattoos—the pictures come alive and tell the future. Fascinated, the young man listens, then as the Illustrated Man falls asleep, he watches the pictures move and come to life. Each illustration tells one of the stories in the collection. Once the narrator has witnessed all of the tales told by the illustrations and has learned each of their individual lessons, he looks at the one blank spot on the Illustrated Man’s back. There he sees an image of himself beginning to form, becoming real, and this new illustration shows the Illustrated Man strangling him. The narrator runs away before the last picture crystallizes, before it can become real. Thus, he changes the reality predicted by the illustration and escapes with his life.
The narrator has experienced the lessons or themes that each of the stories tells, just as the reader will experience these themes as he reads the stories. He will witness the destructive power of fantasy and imagination in “The Veldt” and “Zero Hour,” and thus learn how our primitive wishes may lead to catastrophe if they are allowed to become reality. He will observe the redemptive power of fantasy in “Kaleidoscope” and learn how the child’s belief can actually create or redeem life when based upon hope and innocent wonder. Finally, he will witness the artistic power of fantasy when the child’s boundless imagination is tempered with adult knowledge and control, and when this power is put to constructive purposes.
By putting these various lessons together, our narrator learns an overall truth: fantasy can become reality through imagination, and this fantasy may either be a destructive or a constructive force, depending upon its use. The child is born with the ability to imagine, yet he lacks the knowledge to control and channel this talent. As he grows older, the adult loses the ability to imagine, even as he gains the knowledge necessary to use his imagination. If the adult can retain his child-like ability to imagine, and if he has the knowledge to use it wisely, he will be able to make fantasy become real by channeling his talent into some form of artistic communication.
The narrator of The Illustrated Man learns to believe in the power of fantasy by watching the pictures on the tattooed man’s back. He learns to believe in the possibility of fantasy becoming real, and he learns of the potential dangers of this genesis. He saves himself by learning this important lesson and realizes that the Illustrated Man lacks the knowledge to control his own fantastic illustrations. Thus, the narrator escapes from a destructive fantasy and learns to use his own child-like imagination by narrating the tales of The Illustrated Man to an audience to become a creative artist in his own right. His telling of the stories brings fantasy to life for the reader as the narrator creates the tales on the printed page. The entire collection of stories serves as a warning to the reader—and society—that we must not become too adult to imagine, nor remain too childish to understand. Otherwise, either we will be uncreative, or else our creations will ultimately destroy us. And for Bradbury, who wrote these tales during the height of the cold war and nuclear arms race, our artistic creations may involve technology that can be highly destructive.
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