A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘Kaleidoscope’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Kaleidoscope’ is a short story by the American author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1952 collection of interlinked tales, The Illustrated Man. ‘Kaleidoscope’ deals with the theme of death, and how human beings respond to their imminent deaths, by focusing on a crew of astronauts who are thrown out into space after their rocket explodes.

‘Kaleidoscope’: plot summary

Bradbury’s story begins with a rocket exploding in space, and its crew becoming separated. However, they can still communicate using the phones in their spacesuits.

Hollis, the captain of the spaceship, talks with his fellow crew members: Applegate (who tells Hollis that he blackballed him at the Rocket Company several years before), Stimson (who grows panicked, and is put out of his misery by Hollis, who smashes in his glass face mask on his spacesuit to knock him out), and Lespere (who boasts of having wives on Mars, Venus, and Jupiter, as well as what a rich and exciting life he’s led).

Lespere boasts of his wives on different planets, and Hollis tells him that none of it matters because it’s all over now, and it’s as if it never happened. Lespere disagrees, arguing that he remembers it, so it’s not true to say it doesn’t matter whether he lived a good life or not.

Hollis then realises that at least Lespere had lived a good and full life, unlike himself, who had already been as good as dead for many years. He realises he has been behaving in a mean way. Applegate then tells Hollis that he lied about blackballing his captain five years earlier: he reveals that he only said it to hurt him, but it wasn’t true. The two men are reconciled, despite the growing (physical) distance between them.

Then an astronaut named Stone (fittingly, it turns out) gets caught up in a meteor shower, and tells the others that the sight is like a kaleidoscope, with all the rocks of different colours surrounding him as he is swept up and carried off by the meteors. He bids Hollis and the others farewell, and Hollis meditates on the idea of Stone joining the meteor shower next time it orbits the Earth.

Hollis is the only one left, and wishes – as he hurtles towards the Earth’s atmosphere, knowing he will burn up on re-entry – that he could do one last thing for other people before he dies. At this point, the perspective of the story changes, and we join a little boy down on the surface of the Earth, looking up and seeing Hollis falling out of the sky. The boy mistakes him for a shooting star, as does the boy’s mother, who tells her son to make a wish.

‘Kaleidoscope’: analysis

‘Kaleidoscope’ is a science-fiction story which explores the human attitude to approaching death. Hollis and his crew of astronauts know they are doomed once their rocket explodes and they are cast out into space: nobody will come to save them, and even if they did somehow manage to travel through space towards the Earth, they would burn up and die when they passed through the atmosphere. Indeed, this ends up being Hollis’ own fate at the end of the story.

Death, of course, isn’t this sudden for most people: instead, it’s a gradual process of decay and demise. But Bradbury cleverly weaves this element into ‘Kaleidoscope’, too, and makes it work on a symbolic level. While the men are talking, Hollis is being struck by meteorites which are literally chipping bits off him: he loses part of one arm, and then part of a leg. It’s a neat metaphor for death, and the way we tend to fade away and come apart as we approach our end. Death is not sudden, but a gradual process of falling off.

However, something happens when Hollis loses his leg. At this moment, Applegate extends the figurative olive branch to him, telling him that he made up the story about blackballing Hollis just because he wanted to hurt his feelings, but he now regrets the lie. Bradbury tells us that, at this moment, Hollis felt his heart start to work again.

We are encouraged to analyse this statement figuratively as well as literally: he is coming back to life, albeit in the moment of his imminent death. He has rediscovered what it feels like to be human, by being reconciled with Applegate in this small way. Now he has attained this state of acceptance, he can also accept his coming death, stoically realising that he cannot change it and determined to make a good death by making it count.

But why does Ray Bradbury title his story ‘Kaleidoscope’? The title obviously refers to Stone’s description of the meteors in the meteor shower which sweep him up and take him off in their path. The word ‘kaleidoscope’ literally means ‘looking at beautiful forms’ or ‘looking at beautiful images’, because when one looks into the device known as a kaleidoscope, one sees beautiful shapes and colours, much as Stone does when he is caught up in the meteor shower.

Even in the moment in which his fate is sealed and he knows his death is imminent, Stone can appreciate the beauty around him. Hollis must overcome his meanness and look for the beauty too. He goes further than this, creating something beautiful in the moment of his death as he burns up and appears to the small boy on the ground like a shooting star coming through the atmosphere.