Stephen Cummings
1/8/09
Short Story
Final Paper
Man Vs Machine
“It was a warm afternoon in early September when I first met the Illustrated Man. Walking along an asphalt road, I was on the final leg of a two weeks’ walking tour of Wisconsin. Late in the afternoon I stopped, ate some pork, beans, and a doughnut, and was preparing to stretch out and read when the Illustrated Man walked over the hill and stood for a moment against the sky.” (1). This describes how the narrator first meets the Illustrated Man. He becomes intrigued by the moving tattoos on the Illustrated Man’s body and discovers each of them tells a different story. Each story in Ray Bradbury’s collection, The Illustrated Man, is extraordinary and centers on the future, new technologies, and new discoveries. Through these stories, Ray Bradbury is trying to convey a message. The purpose of this collection is to show that the abuse of technology will lead to physical and psychological chaos.
In the story, “The Veldt”, Bradbury shows how technology can become an obsession and lead to chaos. A family of four, two parents and two children, lives in a house that, in a sense, is alive. The house did everything for the family. It would clean, cook, and even entertain the family. As the story begins, Bradbury is describing the house as George, the father, walks down the hallway by saying, “They walked down the hall of their soundproofed, Happylife Home, which had cost them thirty thousand dollars installed, this house which clothed and fed and rocked them to sleep and played and sand and was good to them.” (7). Bradbury is saying this as the story starts to show how the family already has a dependence on machines and technology. The most interesting room in the house, however, was the children’s nursery. Unlike any other nursery, this one would change and become whatever the children imagined. The nursery was seemingly harmless based on the fact it was controlled by 10-12 year old kids....