Ray Bradbury – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Veldt’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Veldt’ is a short story by the American author Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), included in his 1952 collection of linked tales, The Illustrated Man. The story concerns a nursery in an automated home in which a simulation of the African veldt is conjured by some children, but the lions which appear in the nursery start to feel very real. ‘The Veldt’ can be analysed as a cautionary tale about the dangers of technology, especially when it threatens the relationship between parents and their children.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Fog Horn’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Fog Horn’ is a 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), republished in 1953 as the opening story in his collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. The story, which is about a lighthouse whose foghorn emits a noise which attracts the attention of a primeval dinosaur living miles below the ocean, contains a number of key themes of Bradbury’s work, especially in its depiction of technology and the need for connection and companionship.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Pedestrian’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Pedestrian’ is a 1951 short story by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), which is included in his 1953 collection The Golden Apples of the Sun. In some ways a precursor to Bradbury’s more famous novel Fahrenheit 451, ‘The Pedestrian’ is set in a future world in which people sit mindlessly and passively in front of their television sets every evening.

The ‘pedestrian’ of the story’s title is the one man in the city who refuses to do so, and doesn’t even own a television.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ is, like many stories Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) wrote in the early 1950s, haunted by the fear of nuclear war. Sometimes known by the slightly longer title, ‘August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains’, the story appeared in Bradbury’s 1951 collection The Martian Chronicles and remains one of his best-known and most widely studied short stories.

The story is set in a house in 2026, when nuclear war has annihilated human life. However, the technological devices in the house, such as the mechanical clock and dishwasher, continue to perform their daily automated duties, until they, too, are overwhelmed and destroyed by the forces of nature.

A Summary and Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Perhaps the greatest literary rendition of ‘rock, paper, scissors’ ever written, ‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’ is a 1953 short story by the American writer Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). The story tells of two cities ruled by Mandarins or emperors, who continually seek to destroy each other by building their city walls into different shapes which will ‘beat’ the other.

‘The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind’ is an allegory for the Cold War, so its signs and symbols need some unpicking and analysis to be fully appreciated and understood. Before we come to the analysis, however, it might be worth sketching out the plot of the story.