A Literary Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s Short Story “the...

INDIVIDUAL WORK A Literary Analysis of Ray Bradbury’s Short Story â€Å"The Dragon† 1) The plot of the story The story begins with the description of a deep night and two men bent by their lonely fire. These men are speaking about a strange, mysterious creature, which seems to ruin everything on its way. They are talking about a dreadful dragon, which is described with much detail: â€Å"This dragon, they say his eyes are fire. His breath a white gas; you can see him bum across the dark lands†, â€Å"Passing, the black brunt of its shoulder smashed the remaining horse and rider a hundred feet against the side of a boulder, wailing, wailing, the dragon shrieking, the fire all about, around, under it, a pink, yellow, orange sun-fire with†¦show more content†¦These two worlds have a parallel existence and cross at a point of a time. ââ€" ª Post-structuralism or Deconstruction – the theme of metaphysics plays very significant role in this story and the question of people’s lives is raised. This metaphysical view sees literature functioning beyond the periphery but rather associates every human phenomenon with supernaturalism. ââ€" ª Psychological or Psychoanalytical Criticism – a leading tradition in psychological criticism is the Freudian’s. According to its followers, the meaning of a work of literature depends on the psyche and even on the neuroses of the author. Ray Bradbury wrote this short story in a very old age. And the significance of this story is also view from the point of view of the old person’s being aware of all the new technologies of the world. People shouldn’t live in their shells; they should go ahead together with the progress. Ray Bradbury, being in his late years understood and took the progress in a right way and probably wanted to show that people shouldn’t stop in their development. ââ€" ª Marxism – fundamentally anchored on the work of Karl Marx, Marxism is a dominant critical theory born in the middle of the 19th century and flourished tremendously throughout the twentieth century. Marxism identifies social and economic factors as crucial denominators of relationship in society. This short story has very strong social problems. The people of the Marxist time are afraid of new technologies