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rocket lands. Ultimately the religious theme is the end product of Bradbury's vision of man; the theme is implicit in man's nature. |
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Willis E. McNelly, "Two Views" (1976), Ray Bradbury, ed. Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg (New York: Taplinger, 1980), p. 20 |
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Bradbury seems to regard man's survival in the atomic age as pretty much of an all-or-nothing proposition. He devotes little attention to the day after the end of the world. "The Vacation" (. . .) is an exceptionthough, of course, in that story the end of the world is the result of a wish, not a war. Another exception is "The Smile." In a setting reminiscent of that in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," a group of townfolk gather to engage in a primitive celebration. Jackson's story is set in an indeterminate time, but Bradbury's is set in a world still in the aftershock of atomic war. As in Jackson's story, the festivity the townspeople indulge in is one of destruction. But Bradbury's characters do not pursue human sacrifice, they seek instead to ritually obliterate all remnants of the previous ''civilization," which they blame for the shambles the world has become. On this particular day, the people have chosen to destroy Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. This destruction of works of imagination as a means of cleansing mankind of dangerous passions is a theme underlying several of Bradbury's stories, among them Fahrenheit 451, "Pillar of Fire," "The Exiles," and "Usher II," from The Martian Chronicles. In each of these stories, the main character endeavors in his own way to preserve what his fellows would destroy. In "The Smile," Bradbury's protagonist, a young boy named Tom, cannot save the whole painting but is at least able to retrieve the fragment of canvas containing the famous smile. The little piece of canvas becomes, in effect, another of Bradbury's magic objects. It is a symbol, for the boy and for us, of art itself, and for its value in human society. But it also generates nostalgia for the past and recreates for Tom some of the emotions generated by the whole painting. It serves as talisman and fetish, linking Tom with the past he never knew, and with the future he must live in. The scrap of canvas has changed Tom; the story implies that he will work to create a new "civilized" world, utilizing the better things the past has to offer. |
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Wayne L. Johnson, Ray Bradbury (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1980), pp. 6566 |
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