84 pages • 2 hours read
Ray BradburyThe Illustrated Man
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Story 2
Story 2 Summary: “Kaleidoscope”
“Kaleidoscope” is told from the perspective of a spaceship captain, Hollis. It opens with the explosion of a rocket. The astronauts inside are hurtled into space in different directions but are still able to communicate electronically for an hour or so. Some are calm, some afraid. Others are in denial. One man begins screaming, and Hollis kills him to stop the sound, rationalizing that “the moon or Earth or meteors will kill him, so why not now?” (28-29). Another crew member, Applegate, antagonizes Hollis, criticizing his abilities as captain and insinuating that he had blackballed him at the Rocket Company. A meteor takes off Hollis’s hand, but Hollis tourniquets his spacesuit, prolonging his life.
Another man, Lespere, reminisces about his wives on various planets and his happy life. Hollis, who was frightened of women, tells Lespere none of that matters, as Lespere has ended up here with the rest of them. Hurt, Lespere responds that it does matter, as he has his memories. Hollis realizes he is right—Hollis “only dreams of things he had wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished” (32). Lespere forgives Hollis for his cruelty. A second meteor takes Hollis’s right foot; again, Hollis seals off his suit.
Applegate reaches out to Hollis: “I guess listening to you be mean made me ashamed” (34). He admits that he had lied about the blackballing, and they reconcile. The men begin to lose contact with each other as the distance between them increases. A friend of Hollis’s, Stone, floats off into the Myrmidone cluster of meteors. Hollis reflects that the meteors look like a kaleidoscope, and that the astronauts themselves, the “brain” of the ship, have been scattered like space rocks: “They were all alone” (36).
As Hollis plummets to Earth, he wonders how he can make up for his wasted life. He hopes his ashes will help things grow and wonders if anyone will see him “burn[ing] like a meteor” (37). A country boy and his mother see “a falling star” (37); the reader knows it to be Hollis’s body entering the atmosphere. The mother tells the boy to make a wish.
Story 2 Analysis
“Kaleidoscope” focuses on the “what-if” scenario of several men encountering the inevitability of death on a short but definite timeline. Bradbury uses the setting of space to symbolize mankind’s complete powerlessness and insignificance in the cosmos. As celestial bodies move around him, oblivious to his plight, Hollis considers the futility of his life. The knowledge “began to pull [him] apart, with a slow, quivering precision” (32), a deconstruction of the self as mirrored by space literally disassembling him with meteors. In this early story in his collection, Bradbury’s view of the human condition is bleak, though he ends with a small spark of hope.
Though the Kübler-Ross model of grief would not be circulated until 1969, 18 years after Bradbury published The Illustrated Man, its five stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—are a useful lens for approaching the astronauts’ struggle with death. Some are gripped by existential terror, like Stimson and the unnamed screaming man. Some deny the reality of the situation. Others become angry and cruel, like Applegate and Hollis. Lespere alone seems to accept his fate. Bradbury roots this calm in the character’s sense of a life well lived, but crucially, Lespere’s sense of “the good life” seems to exist outside of morality. He apparently gambled and womanized quite a bit, but if anything, Hollis envies him. In the face of death, societal mores fade away. All that matters is each person’s memories and satisfaction with their own actions.
In examining death so closely, Bradbury also addresses the meaning of life. Hollis starts the story in a place of hopeless existentialism, harping on the futility of life since they are all dying alone. Over the course of the story, though, he concludes that fulfillment may come from the knowledge of having affected someone else, even in the smallest degree. He accepts his death only at the end as he plummets to Earth, considering that his ashes might enrich the soil. His wish is, in the last moment, fulfilled: A little boy wishes on him as a falling star.
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By Ray Bradbury
