Keenan Zucker
Period 3 HAmLit
December 30, 2012
Ray Bradbury ASP Outline
Introduction (Working): Growing up through the 1930s-40s, Ray Bradbury witnessed
technological advances blossom before his eyes, including the growing popularity of the
telephone, television, and increased performance from radios. But Bradbury did not just stay
with his time when launching his literature career, as he dove into the mostly uncommon and
unread science fiction genre as an American writer. As the progress of scientific inventions and
technology continues to rapidly grow and expand, we can look back on the writing of Bradbury
with awe. While writing satirically in setting depicted in the future, Bradbury invented
technology that would be developed decades later in a similar fashion. But rather than marveling
about the potential for humans to develop new gadgets, Bradbury warns us of the devastating
effects they can have on us and our society.
Thesis: While fascinated by the progress of technology in the mid 1900s, as shown through his
artful depictions of futuristic inventions, Ray Bradbury critically comments on technology's
effect on humanity. Technology's ability to absorb our attention and commitments, Bradbury
argues, has endangered our relationships with family in particular. By giving in to these
temptations, we become distracted from the experiences that ultimately enrich the human life.
I. To begin, Bradbury warns us of technology's ability to absorb our attention, focusing only on
the pleasure that it gives us rather than the outside world, creating a sort of isolationism from the
outside world.
A. In Bradbury's short story "The Veldt," a room in the house, called a nursery, is filled
with crystal/television walls capable of producing hologram-like images for creating a
setting.
1. The setting can be whatever the person in the room desires; they just have to
use their imagination.
2. "'Wendy and Peter aren't in their rooms,' said his wife. He lay in his bead with
his beating heart. 'No,' he said. 'They've broken into the nursery.'" (The Veldt)
a. Whenever possible, George's children want to spend their time in the
nursery, even when they are supposed to be in bed.
b. Technology has an effect on people where, while it's fascinating and in
this case "fun," it makes us obsessed to the point where we desire it all of
the time
c. We become addicted to technology, to the point of where if it's taken
away, we don't know how to deal with ourselves. We are too dependent on
its capabilities.
i. "'You know how difficult Peter is about that. When I punished
him a month ago by locking the nursery for even a few hours - the
tantrum be threw! And Wendy too. They live for the nursery.'"
(The Veldt)
3. Related to the 1950s new dependency on the television, where it took over from
the radio as the primary source of media influence. We can still see that point
valid today with studies about the amount of television that children, teenagers, as
well as adults watch on average per day.
B. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury envisions a future where televisions occupy whole walls
at a time. Montag and Mildred's house has three of them in a room
1. Mildred spends all of her time in her parlor with an imaginary "family"
a. The televisions seem to give Mildred a sense of purpose in her life,
waiting for her turn to speak a few lines, when in fact she is really being
dumbed down.
b. She has little clue about the outside world around her, any current
events, political actions, etc. No sense of citizen commitment to
participate in government
i. Mildred has become isolated in her own little world, and as a
result not a threat to the government, unlike Montage
ii. She doesn’t come to appreciate any of the wonders of life, she
only lives for her temping television parlor.
C. Daniel J. Flynn supports Bradbury's claims, arguing that his warnings have come true
in our modern society.
1. "Bradbury's vision of the future germinated from what he saw in the postwar
present: gadgeted distractions, screens separating humans from humans,
televisions raising children, the vicarious life replacing life itself, leisure time
becoming a waste of time. He sensed in which direction the world spun, and he
didn't want to go there. Alas, from Fahrenheit 451's televised helicopter fugitive
chase to the television-as-babysitter of "The Veldt" (1950), we live in the real
world that his fiction had warned us about. "
a. Schools nationwide have read Bradbury's works, yet we continue to
allow social or virtual forms of media take over and essentially waste our
time that could be spent using our imaginations, developing human-human
relationships in the flesh, etc.
b. There needs to be a separation between "leisure time" and what is just
"wasting time." Clearly, there are benefits to relaxation time, but at this
point, when screens surround us during this period, it doesn’t allow us to
truly relax, but stress us out to an even greater degree.
c. When there is a screen between humans, it is not really real humanhuman interaction. Human interactions involve nonverbal cues, facial
expressions, the mutual environment, etc.
New gadgets and inventions have captivated our attention and overtaken our previously relaxing
time to allow us to live is solely virtual connection to the outside world, a world that is in face,
isolated and alone.
II. Additionally, Bradbury depicts inventions that go beyond just basic functions to the point
where they can control all aspects of our lives, every need that we have, to the point where we
aren't really living.
A. In the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," Bradbury illustrates a fully
automated house that continues to operate, despite the owners having been vaporized in
an atomic bomb explosion.
1. In a dystopian society, this type of household is common, even has little mice
to come and collect/clean up the house, a kind of scary image in itself.
2. This story seems to be foreshadowing, in this world where technology has
advanced so far, we endanger the whole race of humans themselves.
a. Bradbury witnessed the atomic bombs being dropped in Japan to end
WWII, knew the effects and potential of the human mind in terms of
weaponry.
b. Other stories depict end-of-the-world scenarios in which our own race
destroys itself, and the different reactions of our people in response.
B. "The Veldt" also depicts an automated house that provides excessive functions for the
family living inside, taking away all creativity and essentially making their lives
pointless.
1. "'But I thought that's why we bought this house, so we wouldn't have to do
anything?'"
a. The automated house gives their lives no real purpose. It's the everyday
experiences that make life worth living. Without it we are basically just
vegetables.
b. Living a life of luxury or ease differs from not really living. By only
following certain procedures and allowing machinery to accomplish most
of our needs themselves seem to become part of that machinery, without
contributing to the world.
2. "'The house is wife and mother now, and nursemaid. Can I compete with an
African veldt? Can I give a bath and scrub the children as efficiently or quickly as
the automatic scrub bath can? I cannot.'"
a. The house is taking over the role of what previously the parents would
do, entertain, bathe, feed etc., causing the parents to feel useless and not in
control of their children's future.
b. This leads to the disintegrating of family values between generations,
ones that are spoiled with technology and those who wish to escape it.
C. Daniel J. Flynn agrees with the way that current technology, the type that Bradbury
warns us about, has indeed played a role in losing track of our human to human
interactions.
1. "Basement Internet porn addictions preventing relationships, video games
supplanting sports as an afterschool activity, vicarious social life through reality
television, and hundreds of Facebook friends without a single true friend are all
manifestations of the way technology helps man dodge his fellow man."
2. Technology has given ways for humans to avoid other human relationships that
can be complicated; with these virtual experiences that may seem real or at least
be enjoyable for the one who partakes in them they cannot worry about other and
focus basically on themselves instead.
D. Observations about Bradbury's own lifestyle help to reflect on his warnings for the
future.
1. Bradbury didn't get a driver license and didn't drive a car. In contrast, he wrote
about fantastic automotive creations, including space ships, Martian sail-ship
vehicles, 200mph buggies, etc.
2. Daniel Flynn supports this claim, referencing how "Bradbury wrote from Los
Angeles, the capital of mindless distraction. But he did so inside a citadel of the
book: the library. Plugging away at coin-operated typewriters in the basement of
UCLA's library, the cash-strapped father finished the initial draft of Fahrenheit
451 in nine days for $9.80"
a. Bradbury's personal fear of technology (of computers, social media,
etc.) led him to use a typewriter for all of his works, and is reflected
through his stories.
b. We can find much symbolism of Bradbury typing in a library--while
surrounded by thousands of books and works of creative imagination,
Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, in which creativity was suppressed and
books were burned.
Bradbury warns us of the alluring temptation to buy into gadgets that are designated to make life
easier, but have taken away too much of what our daily lives are truly about. Until we can learn
to create and enjoy time away from screens and virtual identities, we will not be truly creating
our own identities and we will suffer the consequences.
III. Consequently, advancing technology causes us to lose sight of our own creativity and human
potential by allowing it to takeover our everyday actions. Imagination is one of the gifts of our
human experience, and when technology takes that away, we turn into mechanical-like beings.
A. "No, it would be horrid. I didn't like it when you took out the picture painter last
month."
"That's because I wanted you to learn to paint all by yourself, son."
1. In "The Veldt", the automated house includes appliances, like the "picture
painter," that literally have some sort of creativity program in which they paint
pictures.
2. While fascinating technology, the beauty in painting comes from the human
emotion and experience that goes into each painting and by taking away the
human element what is the true point of a painting.
3. The children lose sight of their own creativity and rely instead on the pleasure
they get from imagining scenes they have read or heard about in their nursery and
waste away hours locked away.
B. Mildred's obsessive use of the televisions all day long watching her family parlor
conversations turns her into a self-absorbing human, a type of human that the government
can control easily.
1. Her character is contrasted my Clarisse, the young girl that Montag meets and
is intrigued by, as she spends time to pick flowers, observe the moon, and sit and
just talk or ask penetrating questions.
a. Bradbury comments on how technology has influenced us so strongly
that one individual like Clarisse cannot change the world by herself,
resisting the change is difficult
b. Clarisse allegedly dies or moves away shortly after meeting Montag,
imagery that implies that resisting the rise in technology leads to dangers,
a consequence that Bradbury is warning us to look out for.
C. Donald Watt believes that Bradbury was especially influenced by the display of the
nuclear weapons to end WWII.
1. "America's nuclear climax to World War II signaled the start of a new age in
which the awesome powers of technology, with its alarming dangers, would
provoke fresh inquiries into the dimensions of man's potentiality and the scope of
his brutality.... The opening paragraph of Bradbury's novel immediately evokes
the consequences of unharnessed technology and contemporary man's contented
refusal to acknowledge these consequences."
2. Humans clearly have potential to inflict catastrophic damage upon other
humans. Now, not to say that humans have not done that in the past, with the
thousands of wars fought over all of history, but the ability to kill 50,000 people
within seconds goes to a whole new level, as with nuclear warfare demonstrated
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
3. Technology has not only caused us to lose our creativity aspect our human
potential but brought out our capacity for evil.
Our human potential to use imaginative and creative thought can suffer when screens and
gadgets become our source of time consumption. Technology has the ability to cause us to ignore
our responsibilities, and allow our amoral, although potentially pleasing, actions to take over and
cause damage to ourselves, our relationships, and even the safety of others.
IV. Finally, the advancement of technology has lead to the endangerment of traditional family
values and broken apart family relationships.
A. In "The Veldt," the children of George and Lydia's own children turn against them and
lock them in the nursery, where the supposedly holographic or unreal lions attack and
murder George and Lydia, leaving the children in peace to imagine whatever they desire
in their nursery.
1. The addiction with playing in the technologically advanced nursery has lead to
serious withdrawal symptoms when taken away.
2. The children turn against their own parents in order to play in peace.
a. Bradbury describes them as normal or privileged children, the parents
weren't abusive, but this one act by George acted upon with sound
judgment, resulted in his death.
b. Technology has created addicts to its absorbing power that act on
impulse and lead to disastrous consequences.
B. Peter Sisario believes that Bradbury is alluding to the natural cycle, in which the world
must essentially become destroyed and rise again like a phoenix, better and improved,
until it has to repeat the process.
1. I disagree with this connection; I believe that Bradbury doesn't wish a complete
rebirth of the system. Bradbury is warning against the effect of technology on our
current society, but I don't think that he seriously believes that it will be able to all
start from scratch. Now, while advancements will continue, I think what Bradbury
would prefer is to stick to the roots of what work and focus on family
relationships, rather than rely on technology to eventually destroy itself and wait
for the rebirth.
C. Bradbury warned against technology by portraying future setting in which humanoid
robots could be developed.
1. In "The Long Years," Hathaway, one of the only members to remain on Mars
after the Earth atom war, recreates his family members into humanoid robots and
lives with them, tying to act like they are the real family, despite their deaths.
a. Technology gives Hathaway a way to try to cope with the loss of his
family members, but it doesn't produce moral results.
b. Instead of dealing with the truth, Hathaway essentially lives a lie with
fake family members, and loses out on real human interaction as a result.
2. Bradbury's short story "Marionettes, Inc." also depicts realistic humanoid
robots, in which Braling purchases one to spend time with his wife when he
doesn’t want to, and temps Smith into getting one as well.
a. Again, technology temps the men to give up on their traditional values
and use technology to cheat to get a source of pleasure, be it vacations,
free time, etc.
b. Bradbury fears technology getting so advanced that it causes us to not
need any responsibility, since there will be an invention for every problem
in life.
c. Humans are getting too reliant on technology to rule their lives, and not
working on building healthy relationships with other live humans.
d. Bradbury shows this through the consequence of each man's actions
i. Braling Two ends up falling in love with Braling's wife and
killing Braling so it can always be with the wife. Bradbury warns
us not only about how family value get endangered by
technology's influence, but he warns us about the power that it
might have, capable of creative and intuitive thought.
ii. Smith eventually finds out that his overly adoring wife is in fact
a robot itself, not his wife. Bradbury again shows how this
technology is tempting humans into abandoning their
commitments using the inventions as methods of doing so. But in
reality they cause even more problems and break apart real human
relationships.
D. Bradbury's novel Fahrenheit 451 captures the abuse of technology by Mildred through
the dwindling romantic relationship between her and her husband Montag, as Montag
becomes more aware of technology's powerful potential as Mildred continues to exploit it
for her own pleasure and comfort.
1. "'It's really fun. It'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth
wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn
out and a wall-TV put in. It's only two thousand dollars'" (20).
a. Mildred's self-centered attitude focuses only on her personal pursuits to
be completely surrounded by media at all times.
b. Technology is corrupting humans by trying to replace working
relationships and family connections with pseudo-relationships that
instead of enriching our lifestyle and add variety to our lives, develop
repeated patterns of behavior that appear to be favorable and pleasurable
to us, while in reality isolating us from our family in flesh.
c. Bradbury is implying the effects that the increasingly popular television
at this time (1950s) he thought would develop in the future.
2. Mildred also wears the Seashell radios to be constantly serenaded by sounds, or
hear the voices of her fake family, instead of listening to the real world or even
her husband.
a. Bradbury's creation of these ear-radios in his predicting or warning of
the future are eerily similar to the way that many teenagers functions
currently, listening to music whenever possible, or adults with their
Bluetooth systems to always be connected to media or entertainment
sources.
E. In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury continues to show how family values have deteriorated in
his depiction of the future. The brainwashed society reflects his fear of the effect of
technology.
1. "I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when
they come home three days a month; it's not bad at all. You heave them into the
'parlor' and turn the switch. It's like washing clothes: stuff laundry in and slam the
lid...They'd just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back! (96)."
a. Children are a hassle; parents prefer to not spend time with them, and
vice versa
b. Parent-Child values have completely deteriorated
2. In Bradbury's future, children are now considered a nuisance instead of a gift.
Mildred clearly prefers her parlor televisions and virtual family to a flesh-andbones family, for children are a responsibility to handle and the humans on this
society lack responsibility and prefer to use technology to rid them of this
responsibility.
Relationships between spouses, parent-child, and between friends all suffer with the advancing
of technology, the increase in social or virtual worlds, and the disregarding of responsibilities
that hold families together.
V. However, Bradbury seems to contradict himself through his descriptions and warnings on the
threat of the future while the hardship and danger of becoming lured to the past.
A. In other Bradbury works, such as Dandelion Wine and throughout the Martian
Chronicles, Bradbury depicts the difficulty it is to not become stuck in the past, and how
luring it is, but ultimately his message is that we must adapt to the future. These stories,
however, do not deal with many technological advances and warnings as "The Veldt" or
Fahrenheit 451 do.
B. James A. Stupple believes that "Bradbury seems to be reiterating what he has said
in The Martian Chronicles—that the past, or stasis, or both, is enticing but deadly, and
that Douglas, like the colonists, must forsake the past and give himself up to change and
progress." when talking about Douglas from Dandelion Wine, in which a twelve year old
experiences growing up and taking on the real world.
1. If Bradbury is arguing that we must give ourselves up to change and progress,
then while did Bradbury deliberately always write with a typewriter, refuse to
drive a car, and often miss large events and even awards for his fear of airplanes?
2. Bradbury is either stuck in the past, a feat that he clearly is warning about
himself, of that under a different context, his views on technology differ from
those on giving up the past in a more ritualistic view.
Bradbury's argument doesn’t come without nuance, but until we research further throughout all
of his works, we must determine that Bradbury separated his main points into individual books,
and all his works do not collectively represent one attitude for the future.
Working Conclusion:
While our scientists have not developed a mechanical hound for assassinations yet, the accurate
predictions of large televisions and headphone-like technologies, as well as humanoid robots and
space travel, have all come true to some extent. As a result, Bradbury's implied warnings of the
disrupting power that these devices pose to the human experience must be listened to cautiously.
It is no coincidence that many of Bradbury's short stories involving fantastic technological
inventions are set in either a dystopian society, or in apocalyptical situations on the brink or post
results of atomic warfare. If we continue to allow our technology to spread its captivating power,
it will slowly begin to endanger our relationships. This is not to say that we must live without
any technological advancement (like the Amish). But learning to distinguish from a useful
gadget and a do it all functioning robot that allows us dismiss responsibility and give into poor
habits will become increasingly important in the years to come. If Bradbury has taught us
anything, it is to be wary of each new technological advancement and treat them with caution
rather than with a overwhelming desire and addiction that leads to loss of potential, creativity,
time, responsibility, and most importantly relationships.