Author:
Ray Bradbury
Date of Publication: 1963
Setting:
The story is set in a city in
the future after a nuclear war: in particular in the city square.
Content:
The main character of this
story is Tom, a little boy who joins a group of people who are quering in front
of a museum to spit on an oil painting belonging to the past, called the "Mona
Lisa" by Leonardo da Vinci. People live a hard, difficult life and hate
every aspect of the past of the past civilization which caused the nuclear war
to break out destroyed their lawful haritage of progress and welfare. Tom is
curious and he is quering up to see the portrait because they say it smiles. Tom
likes going to festivals where remnants of the past are destroyed, concerning
art, science, culture, and technology, but he is not so enraged with hate as the
others are. When Tom sees the painting he finds the woman beautiful and he
cannot take his eyes away from her smile. Suddenly, the people start destroying
the painting and rip it into small pieces of canvas, behaving in a beastly,
violent and wild manner. Tom gets a piece of canvas: the Mona Lisa's smile to
preserve it from destruction. It was beautiful, warm and gentle and it produced
in Tom feelings of affection, beauty and quietness. The smile is personified
because it's the only expression of humanity in Tom's life.
Aim:
With this poem the author wants
to tell the reader the importance of the past which permit us the opportunity to
recollect ourselves to the history and to build up new cultures and future.
Theme:
In the story are showed the
consequences of an hypotetical nuclear war: the destruction of nature and human
life. The past is represented by the painting called Monna Lisa by Leonardo Da
Vinci and in this story the author exprimes the contrast between excessive
progress and the research of future aims and the few care for the old precious
things such as art, science, old culture etc.
Key words: The key words shows a contrast: the Smile and hate. The Smile is personified because it is the only expression of humanity in Tom's life. The Mona Lisa is also considered the the most beautiful portrait ever painted, so it can it can be considered the most perfect example of art.
Language: The language is simple and easy to understand but there are also difficult sentences and words (usually slang). The sentences are always short.
Narrator: He is in 3rd person. He is omniscent.
Narrative Technique: The events are narrated chronologically. The narrative techniques used are dialogue and narration.
Point
of view:
The narrator's, who thinks that
hope will never die.
Characters:
The main
character is Tom. This boy is curious and he doesn't feel hate (or he can't?!)
against the past, but he is fascinated by it. For this reason he preserve a
piece of canvas (the Mona Lisa's smile) from the imminent destruction. The
secondary characters are Grigsby, Tom's father, his mother and his brother, and
other unknown people.
Ray
Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Illinois, USA in 1920.
Waukegan later became the setting of his novel Dandelion Wine, in which he
remembered his happy childhood with his grandfather. In 1934 his family
moved to Los Angeles where he attended the Los Angeles High School. He
graduated in 1938. Those were the years of the science fiction pulp magazines
and soon Bradbury became a young fan.
He moved from an adolescent fan to professional
writing between 1938 and in
1940, when he published his first two short stories. Since 1943 he
has become a full professional writer. In 1944 he already sold about forty short
stories for a total of 800 $. Many of these stories (later collected in Dark
Carnival) appeared in Weird Tales, a horror pulp magazine: they were not, in
fact, primarily science fiction, but ranged from horror to domestic drama.
In 1947 he married Marguerite McClure and has had four daughters. Since then he
has never moved from Los Angeles. The closeness to Mexico has influenced him
deeply, so that many of his stories are set in Latin American countries and have
Latin American protagonists.
Those were his most prolific years: in 1950 he published Illartian Chronicles, a
collection of tales concerning the colonization of Mars, which received a
remarkable critical and popular success. In 1953 he renewed his success with
Fahrenheit 451, his only novel-length science fiction work (in 1966 it was
filmed by Francois Truffaut).
Besides he started his career as a playwright and film screenwriter, he has also worked on the adaption of some of his stories for TV.
