In a Medicine for Melancoly.What was the medicine?

quote:

Originally posted by mykel@inorbit:
In a Medicine for Melancoly.What was the medicine?

The book!

I always thought that was somewhat a very strange story. Perhaps a phase he was going thru. Look at it as something along the lines of the reason the movie "Pleasantville" had colorized scenes in their film. Since I have not read it in years, perhaps I would have a different take on it nowadays.

Will need to check out the story as I haven't read it for awhile. I think the medicine may have been the imagination, but I need to check.

As a side note, I enjoyed the movie, "Pleasantville," but one aspect bothered me--if I remember it correctly. The B&W world was the world of the "real" and mundane--a world without creativity and true life. The color reflected that the world had gotten better and in some ways may have even been a contributing factor in the cause of the world getting better. I loved the premise and the clear symbolism of going from B&W to Color (Reminiscent of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" song); but was bothered by one thing. EVERY instance of "coming to life" involved sexuality, rather than creativity. Masturbation, adultery, fornication, public nudity . . . all these were keys to going from a B&W world to a world of color. Even the painter had to paint nudes in order to be enlighted--and then had to display them in the public square. The reaction of the B&W people was to show how narrow and unenlightened they were, but do we put Penthouse pictures in the public square, where there is no discretion as to who sees them? The sister who becomes enlightened through reading literature, is reading "Lady Chatterley's Lover (a great book about sexual awakening within an adulterous relatinship). Also, why couldn't the sexual awareness have occured within a married relationship, rather than outside it? In the end, of course, it all works out; but the path could have been more creative.

I wish the film had found a way (rather than lazily relying on sex) to show the difference between a mundane world without art, creativity, and individuality, and a world that could result from a free expression of these things. Sex is a human good, and does bring (under reasonable rules of conduct) much human happiness and fulfillment; but it is not the ONLY means of enjoying life.

I guess that's my rant for the day.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mr. Dark,

Good one, Mr. Dark.

My take on 'Medicine' is that it was a sexual one. Could it be something else? Regular readers were not accustomed to this sort of story-telling from Bradbury. His short story, 'The Illustrated Woman' was, on some ways, the opposite in moral tone from 'Medicine.' Now if the title were used to reference ALL the stories in the book, that's something else. But there was a single story with that title, and it had a much stronger indication to the meaning of medicine in that one story than if it meant ALL the stories in the book.

I think the story's end is ambiguous enough that it COULD be sexual in nature. But I don't know that I think that is enough. In Bradbury, metaphor is everything. The question is twofold: (1) Did the Dustman have sex with Camillia or was she fulfilled in some other way? (2) If the story alludes to a sexual encounter, does that encounter point to something else as what the sex stands for?

There is some question to me as to whether the evening's activities were real on a physical level, or whether they were the results of her drifting off to sleep. A kind of pleasant "Fever Dream" (see Bradbury's story of the same name). There is a line near the end, "The girl smiled again, a white smile, in her sleep." While she may have drifted off to sleep after a sexual encounter, it may also be that she dreamed the entire thing. Such being the case, what healed her but her imagination? Also, the dustman is characterized by a "white ivory slot of a smile". This phrase is repeated and then Camillia, at the end, has a white smile in her sleep. Is there a kind of mystical union here with something bigger than a physical person? Was she, perhaps, enveloped in God's love?

The fact that when they took her outside, she felt she was flying, and the touch and mystical appearance of the moon, both seem to hint at something transcendant occuring. How much of the encounter with the Dust man was real, and how much was imagined? Also, the Dust Witch, another of Bradbury's characters, is a sort of mystical, metaphysically impactual character. Does the "Dust" in the name tie the Dustman to the Dust Witch's powers of persuasion? Or is he characteristic of the dust--always moving, light, almost ethereal?

If you assume the physical reality of the encounter, it may not have ended in sex. It may have been a hug. The touch and warmth of another human has restorative powers. Is Bradbury saying the only "concoction" she needed was a human connection?

Who knows?

Mr Dark,

while I agree with much of your critique of Pleasantville, I think you have to remember that the world depicted was meant to be that of an idealised 1950s sitcom family, where there certainly was no sex. (Even into the 1960s, didn't Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore always have separate beds?) It's a comment on cosy nostalgia as much as anything.

Phil:

I think that what you say is true. Nevertheless, I feel the movie would have been better had there been a broader definition of what gives "color" to life. I stand by my rant, but your point is well-taken.

Thanks for your input. When I'm away or just lurking, I miss the interplay of the Bradbury experts out here.