DAS PALAVRAS QUE MASCARAM A VIDA E O QUE VEM DEPOIS DA DITA CUJA ACABAR - BY BRADBURY AN AMERICAN YES THEY CAN ....Americans are far more remarkable than we give ourselves credit for. We've been so busy damning ourselves for years. We've done it all, and yet we don't take credit for it.

The Illustrated Man Quotes (showing 1-16 of 16)

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.”

 

“Long before you knew what death was you were wishing it on someone else.”

 

“From the outer edge of his life, looking back, there was only one remorse, and that was only that he wished to go on living.”

 

“I've always figured it that you die each day and each day is a box, you see, all numbered and neat; but never go back and lift the lids, because you've died a couple of thousand times in your life, and that's a lot of corpses, each dead a different way, each with a worse expression. Each of those days is a different you, somebody you don't know or understand or want to understand.”

 

“My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M.

So as not to be dead.”

“I'd like to know what a place is like when I'm not there. I'd like to be sure.”

 

“They'll fry you, bleach you, change you! Crack you, flake you away until you're nothing but a husband, a working man, the one with the money who pays so they can come sit in there devouring their evil chocalates! Do you think you could control them?”

 

“My waiter friend, Laurent, working at the Brasserie Champs du Mars near the Eiffel Tower, one night while serving me Une Grande Beer, explained his life. “I work from ten to twelve hours, sometimes fourteen,” he says, “and then at midnight I go dancing, dancing, dancing until four or five in the morning and go to bed and sleep until ten and then up, up and to work by eleven and another ten or twelve or sometimes fifteen hours of work.” “How can you do that?” I ask. “Easily,” he says. 

“To be asleep is to be dead. It is like death. So we dance, we dance so as not to be dead. We do not want that.” “How old are you?” I ask, at last. “Twenty-three,” he says. “Ah,” I say and take his elbow gently. “Ah. Twenty-three, is it?” “Twenty-three,” he says, smiling. “And you?” “Seventy-six,” I say. “And I do not want to be dead, either. But I am not twenty-three. How can I answer? What do I do?” “Yes,” says Laurent, still smiling and innocent, “what do you do at three in the morning?” “Write,” I say, at last. “Write!” Laurent says, astonished. “Write?” “So as not to be dead,” I say. “Like you.” “Me?” “Yes,” I say, smiling now, myself. “At three in the morning, I write, I write, I write!”

 

“Ya no existe el cohete. Nunca existió. Ni la gente. No hay nadie en todo el universo. Nunca hubo nadie. Ni planetas. Ni estrellas". Eso decía. Y luego algo acerca de sus pies y sus piernas y sus manos: "No mas manos", decía. "Ya no tengo manos. Nunca las tuve. Ni cuerpo. Nunca lo tuve. Ni boca. Ni cara. Ni cabeza. Nada. Solamente espacio. Solamente el abismo".”

 

“Because sometimes the Church seems like those posed circus tableaus where the curtain lifts and men, white, zinc-oxide, talcum-powder statues, freeze to represent abstract Beauty. Very wonderful. But I hope there will always be room for me to dart about among the statues, don't you, Father Stone?”

“Wouldn’t it be fine if we could prove things with our mind, and know for certain that things are always in their place. I’d like to know what a place is like when I’m not there. I’d like to be sure.”

 

“The odors of perfume were fanned out on the summer air by the whirling vents of the grottoes where the women hid like undersea creatures, under electric cones, their hair curled into wild whorls and peaks, their eyes shrewd and glassy, animal and sly, their mouths painted a neon red.” 

 

 

“Mother wasn't afraid of the sky in the day so much, but it was the night stars that she wanted to turn off, and sometimes I could almost see her reaching for a switch in her mind, but never finding it.” 

 

“She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and, once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with.”

 

“To be asleep is to be dead. It is like death. So we dance, we dance so as not to be dead. We do not want that.”

 

“It was summer and moonlight and we had lemonade to drink, and we held the cold glasses in our hands, and Dad read the stereo-newspapers inserted into the special hat you put on your head and which turned the microscopic page in front of the magnifying lens if you blinked three times in succession.” 

 

 From "The Visitor":

After Leonard Mark is killed, Saul tries to imagine New York but fails:

It didn't work. It wasn't the same. New York was gone and nothing he could do would bring it back. He would rise every morning and walk on the dead sea looking for it, and walk forever around Mars, looking for it, and never find it. And finally lie, too tired to walk, trying to find New York in his head, but not finding it. (185)

There is a sense of abandonment in these images that reinforces the loneliness at the start of the story. New York is of course metonymic of Earth but also of the things Saul has given up in his poor treatment of Mark: companionship and a humane view of life, things which help place human above beasts. While the fatigue of walking is evident from the disease, it also shows a moral and spiritual collapse - the end result of chasing something he cannot achieve, much like Captain Hart in "The Man".

15.) From "The Concrete Mixer":

Ettil Vrye frets about his fate if he stays on Earth:

All that he really knew was that if he stayed here he would soon be the property of a lot of things that buzzed and snorted and hissed, that give off fumes or stenches. In six months he would be the owner of a large pink, trained ulcer, a blood pressure of algebraic dimensions, a myopia this side of blindness, and nightmares as deep as oceans and infested with improbable lengths of dream intestines through which he must violently force his way each night. No, no. (203)

Bradbury uses his poetic style to evoke disgust instead of beauty, a satiric foreboding instead of a nostalgic look back. The images are grotesque and hyperbolic, with the use of body parts to help reinforce a sense of disease and malaise. The simple "No, no," at the end is straightforward and almost a logical conclusion to all he described before: if this is what's facing him, of course he will refuse it, emphatically so, as seen by the repetition.

16.) From "Marionettes, Inc.":

Justifying his decision to have a robot look-alike, Braling explains to Smith,

"It may be splitting hairs, but I think it is highly ethical. After all, what my wife wants most of all is me. This marionette is me to the hairiest detail. I've been home all evening. I shall be home with her for the next month. In the meantime another gentlemen will be in Rio after ten years of waiting. When I return from Rio, Braling Two here will go back in his box." (215)

The term "splitting hairs" shows how much Braling is morally compromised in making this decision - he needs to refine the argument for it to work in his favor. He refers to Braling Two as if it was Braling himself, equating the two as being essentially the same. What Braling doesn't understand is that he provides the very rationale for his replacement: if the marionette is him, then why keep the actual him around?

17.) From "The City":

As the crew of the rocket expedition continues to explore, we find,

Now the city was fully awake! Now the vents sucked and blew air, the tobacco odor from the invaders' mouths, the green soap scent from their hands. Even their eyeballs had a delicate odor. The city detected it, and this information formed totals which scurried down to total other totals. The crystal windows glittered, the Ear tautened and skinned the drum of its hearing tight, tighter - all of the senses of the city swarming like a fall of unseen snow, counting the respiration and the dim hidden heartbeats of the men, listening, watching, tasting. (227)

The use of "Now" evokes a sense of power, of a sudden surge of activity. The reference to the senses is both meant to disgust the reader with stimulants that would otherwise go unconsidered, while the repeated use of the word "totals" indicates the cold calculation of the city in its plan for revenge. The Ear's tightening creates both a physical and literary tension - a build-up to the attack that will be sprung on the prey.

From "Zero Hour":

Early in the story, we find this description:

Meanwhile, parents came and went in chromium beetles. Repairmen came to repair the vacuum elevators in houses, to fix fluttering television sets or hammer upon stubborn food-delivery tubes. The adult civilization passed and repassed the busy youngsters, jealous of the fierce energy of the wild tots, tolerantly amused at their flourishings, longing to join in themselves. (233)

There is a sense of mindless activity by adults, reinforced by the reference to "beetles" - insects - and the fixing of technology meant to comfort and pamper humans. The tension felt in relation to the world of children is seen as jealousy, then amusement - not seeing any seriousness in the activities of children, wanting to partake in the useless expense of energy when in reality it is the adult routines that are themselves empty of meaning.

19.) From "The Rocket":

The dream of space travel is summed up when the children believe they are actually in outer space:

The moon dreamed by. Meteors broke into fireworks. Time flowed away in a serpentine of gas. The children shouted. Released from their hammocks, hours later, they peered from the ports. "There's Earth!" "There's Mars!" (255)

The childlike wonder in the language is summed up by unusual word choices: the moon dreams, the meteors are likened to fireworks, and time is a "serpentine of gas". The children shouting simple declaratives show how basic the dream is, and how it's buoyed by their energy.

20.) From "The Illustrated Man":

As Phelps wonders if he truly wants to strangle his wife, Lisabeth confronts him:

She walked around the table, hands fitted to her hips, talking to the beds, the walls, the table, talking it all out of her. And he thought: Or did I know? Who made this picture, me or the witch? Who formed it? How? Do I really want her dead? No! And yet. ... He watched his wife draw nearer, nearer, he saw
the ropy strings of her throat vibrate to her shouting. This and this and this was wrong with him! That and that and that was unspeakable about him! (270)

As he ponders in italics who is responsible for the tattoo on his chest, he's also pondering where the responsibility lies in this murderous witch. Meanwhile, the language of the wife is built off short clauses that play up the anger of Lisabeth. The reference to "the ropy strings of her throat" creates the temptation to grab the throat and still the vibration of the strings - a clear foreshadow that he will indeed commit the vile act. This culminates in a white noise of accusations with the use of "this" and "that" to show how her rage is vented but has no distinct value for Phelps, that it has become a general attitude separate from whatever reasons may exist.

21.) From The Epilogue:

Having seen all the stories, the narrator describes the last tattoo to form:

The picture on his back showed the Illustrated Man himself, with his fingers about my neck, choking me to death. I didn't wait for it to become clear and sharp and a definite picture. (275)

The refusal to wait for a "sharp and definite picture" plays up the panic he feels, as well as his wish to avoid the finality such a definite picture would provide - that is, his own death.