| It is an interesting story. Typical to Bradbury, he makes these high-tech scenarios seem absolutely credible so he can focus on the human side of it.
You have two bad marriages. The one guy (Smith) feels smothered by the "crushing" love of his wife. Braling, on the other hand, has no love from or for his wife. The story begins with a very commonplace conversation between two men commiserating with each other about their disappointing marriages. Very commonplace stuff.
Then the idea of duplicate humans is introduced.
Rather than dealing with the problems in their marriages, they both seek artificial solutions. These guys run to artificial replacements. "Real world" men escape with extra hours at work, or too many nights out with friends, or extended business trips, or 1/2 day golfing outings on weekends, or watching too much tv, etc. These guys -- because it's Bradbury -- escape (or try to escape) through these marionettes.
But neither solution works. For Braling, his marionette actually falls in love with the wife, feels that he is truly alive, and desires a full life -- not a half-life in a box. In the end, he murders Braling, and is going to make a better marriage (even though he is not human) with the human wife because he loves life and loves the woman. Or, at least, he (it) thinks he (it) does.
Smith is being crushed by his wife's excessive, controlling love. He seeks escape, but has regrets because he does have some love for his wife. When he looks at her asleep, though, she is described as pale, huge and piously asleep. In spite of that, he feels badly enough about what he's going to do that tears come to his eyes as he contemplates it. Nevertheless, his decision is to proceed. He checks the checkbook and finds $10,000.00 missing, only to discover, to his horror, that she is a marionette herself. His wife has beat him to the punch.
Great story. Your post prompted me to re-read it after many years.
Again, as he often does, Bradbury just oversimplifies the technology to focus on the human side of the story. This is another example of what he means when he says he is primarily a fantasy writer, rather than a science fiction writer. |
