Читать книгу The Illustrated Ray Bradbury - James Arthur Anderson - Страница 5

INTRODUCTION

Ray Bradbury was one of the first science fiction writers to achieve the best of two worlds. His books have sold millions of copies and have remained continually in print, even though science fiction has only recently achieved “best-selling” status. Even more noteworthy, perhaps, Bradbury’s works have been accepted as serious literature in an age when science fiction is still burdened by the old stigma of being “pulp” literature. His stories have found their way into anthologies of modern fiction and are frequently taught in college classes.

In this book I intend to examine the Ray Bradbury phenomenon by conducting a structuralist reading of selected short stories from one of his best-known collections, The Illustrated Man. This structuralist reading will attempt to illuminate how Bradbury has captured the imagination of the reading public and earned the respect of the academic community. The Illustrated Man, originally published in 1951, represents Bradbury at his best. I will use the stories from this collection to illustrate (pardon the pun) Bradbury’s narrative techniques and to expose his major literary themes. My analysis of the stories will show that Bradbury cannot be classified as a science fiction writer, at least not in the traditional sense of the term. Finally, I will show that The Illustrated Man is more than just a collection of short stories: this analysis will demonstrate that it is a unified work in which each story contributes to the meaning of the collection as a whole.

I have chosen to analyze the stories using a structuralist methodology for several reasons. First, structuralism has always been attracted to popular literature. Early structuralist critics such as V. Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss examined myths and folktales; later structuralists studied detective stories (Todorov, Poetics 42-52), as well as science fiction (Scholes, Fabulation) and the literature of the fantastic (Todorov, Fantastic), stories that, I feel, represent the mythology of the space age. Popular fiction best represents the thoughts and ideas of the culture that produces it, and structuralism defines itself, in part, as cultural analysis that “seeks to explore the relationship between the system of literature and the culture of which it is a part” (Scholes, Structuralism 11).

Second, The Illustrated Man makes good material for a structuralist reading because the stories are connected to a larger framework that links them together to form an overall theme. We can, therefore, use structuralist techniques (such as Todorov’s plot “equations”) that compare stories to find a common plot as tools to show relationships between stories in a collection. Finally, structuralism as a critical methodology has historically been used primarily to study prose, most notably, perhaps, short fiction. Traditional formalist techniques concentrate more on theme than method, while structuralists such as Gerard Genette and Seymour Chatman have developed a science of narratology. This study of how a story works, in addition to what it actually says, seems most appropriate for analyzing Bradbury’s style and attempting to account for his popular success.

To “illustrate” Bradbury I will use a specific methodology, that of Robert Scholes (Semiotics 87-104), which I will adapt to my analysis as needed. This method combines the interpretive techniques of three of the most influential structuralist critics to date: Tzvetan Todorov, Gerard Genette, and Roland Barthes. I will apply this methodology to five stories from The Illustrated Man: “The Veldt”, “Kaleidoscope”, “The Long Rain”, “Zero Hour”, and “The Rocket”, and to the narrative framework, the prologue and epilogue of the work.

I realize that these methods were never intended to be used for the purposes of explication to which I will put them. A “pure” structuralist would never approve of my interpretive technique; however, I feel that these various structuralist theories “complement one another in addressing the fictional text from different angles” (Scholes, Semiotics 87), and that they can be used for textual analysis. I will adapt these methods as needed in each particular story, since my goal is an understanding of The Illustrated Man, not an essay on structuralist dogma.

The first of these three methods, that of Tzvetan Todorov, catalogues stories according to plot structure by reducing plot to the form of an equation, much like the grammatical diagram of the sentence, where nouns represent characters and verbs represent action. This method allows the critic to reduce stories to their barest form, then to compare them for similar plot structures. Looking at the nouns and verbs of several related stories may afford the critic some unusual insights; often, the reduction process forces the critic to thematize the work in novel and productive ways. Although Todorov’s ultimate aim is to catalogue all the plots that occur in literature, his critical method can be quite valuable, I think, in the analysis of a single collection of related texts.

The second critical method I will use is that of Gerard Genette. Genette’s narrative theory distinguishes between narrative and discourse. The narrative, or “story”, includes the basic sequence of events that occurs in the text. The discourse refers to the way that the author tells the story. To use this method of analysis, the critic examines narrative voice, time reference and frequency, and the pace of actual events in the story. The critic looks at narrative voice in order to determine who narrates the story and through whose point of view the events are seen. This structuralist study goes beyond mere “point of view” to determine how and why a narrative may subtly shift from one focus character to another. The critic examines the time reference and frequency to isolate the present narrative from the past, as shown in flashbacks, and from the future, as shown in foreshadowing and predictions. Finally, the critic looks at the speed with which the discourse moves through the sequence of events in the story.

The third critical method is that of Roland Barthes as outlined in S/Z. Barthes examines a text by breaking it down into a series of semiotic “codes” common to all literature. In order to understand anything, be it a work of literature, a piece of music, or an advertisement on television, the human mind must interpret it through fixed codes of understanding. Language itself represents such a code; unless one understands the “code of English,” discourse in English becomes meaningless. According to Barthes, there are five basic codes of understanding in any artistic work. These are the proairetic code (or code of actions), the hermeneutic code (or code of enigmas), the cultural code, the connotative code, and the symbolic code:

...Each code is one of the forces that can take over the text (of which the text is the network), one of the voices out of which the text is woven. Alongside each utterance, one might say that the off-stage voices can be heard: they are the codes: in their interweaving, these voices... de-originate the utterance: the convergence of the voices (of the code) becomes writing, a stereographic space where the five codes, the five voices, intersect.... (S/Z 21)

In addition, written works may contain a textual code, and a specialized symbolic code called the psychoanalytical code.

The first two codes, the action and hermeneutic codes, define the narrative elements that distinguish between the story and the discourse. The action code resembles the grammatical diagram of Todorov, or the “story” of Genette, except that it concentrates more on the physical actions of the story—Todorov’s “verbs” in the plot sentence. Since I will be applying the theories of Todorov and Genette in my analysis, I will focus on Barthes’ action code primarily in terms of the physical location and movement of the plot’s actions (i.e. outside to inside; down to up). The hermeneutic code, or “code of enigmas,” reveals the series of questions or puzzles that an author uses to create suspense in a story. The reader desires answers to these puzzles, yet the author withholds this information until the last possible moment. This code is especially important in popular fiction—indeed, the detective story 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.