I guess the subject line is pretty self explanatory -- I haven't finished reading The October Country, but I started today and just finished The Next in Line. I am *so* confused. I don't understand what he's trying to say; the fragility of life? Maybe I need to read the rest of the compilation before I get it, I dunno . . .

Any help or ideas would be appreciated!

~shmi~

The story, �The Next in Line� is filled with literary themes. Here are some:

Fear of Death. In this story death is dealt with on many levels and the fear is addressed in many ways. One is that in this small town, the immediacy of death is very real. The funeral procession with the small girl where she has died only a few hours before, makes her death very real. Marie (the wife in the story) associates herself with the girl and can even imagine herself in the coffin, surrounded, trapped and frightened. Another fear of death is in the fear that there are so many things you have not done. Again, Marie begins to list all the things she�d wanted to do but never did. All will eventually die, and in that village there is just no way to escape that.

Fear of Premature Burial. With the focus on rapidly getting people into the ground, is there the possibility that she will be buried alive? The one woman (mummy) in the catacombs was clearly buried alive. He frozen pose clearly indicates she was trying to escape from within the coffin. Compare to EA Poe�s �The Premature Burial�.

Symbols of death. The story is full of symbols of death. The white skeletons, the mummies, the funeral procession with the small coffin, the graveyard, the catacombs, etc. Death is all around them in that village. In the end, Marie�s imagination and awful awareness of death seem to be what finally killed her.

The nature of marriage, relationships and communication. Their marriage is obviously pretty bad. Their inability to communicate is a constant theme in the story. They simply cannot talk with each other about anything. They can banter, but they cannot communicate on anything substantial. When she dies, he does not honor her wishes. It seems obvious he buried her in the village � in direct contradiction to what she pleaded with him over. The story frequently cites �space� between Joseph and Marie. They are never able to close that gap. His hands are not �warm� and that lack of warmth is causing her body to dry up and die. In the end, when she asks him to hold her hands, she pulls away, saying that holding hands with him in her imagination is better than holding hands with him in reality. They never seem to exhibit signs of a truly satisfying marriage.

Fear of change. She is not afraid of the skeletons, because skeletons have always been that way. She fears the flesh � how it decays, etc. It is not just death that she fears, it is change and decay. Maybe she fears that all change is decay and loss, and can�t see change as a good thing. Compare to Bradbury�s �Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed�

Imagination. Bradbury is a big fan of the imagination, but he also sees the imagination as possibly leading to obsessions, imagined fears, exaggerated doubts. Marie clearly is the victim of an imagination out of control. While the imagination can do good things (Bradbury is a huge fan of the imagination) it can also create hells where hells may not actually exist. Why does she fixate on magazines so much at the end of the story? Is it a way of trying to control her fears by getting something in her hands that is familiar and concrete? Something to help her stop being �victimized� by an over-active imagination?

Isolation and loneliness. Marie frequently feels isolated and alone. She is very lonely and being �with� her husband does nothing to alleviate that fear.

Fear of exposure or vulnerability. The frequency of the passages of Marie nude and feeling exposed cannot be accidental. There must be something Bradbury is trying to say about her feelings of vulnerability and exposure for there to be so many scenes where she is naked and very aware of that nudity.

This story is just packed with literary themes. I had never read it looking at this before. This should keep you busy.

As I've explained in other threads, I am not one to ask about themes, as most of the time I wouldn't know a theme if it hit me in the nose, but I am good at offering insights, sidelights, and the like, on stories, which may prove of use in discussing themes.

Ray Bradbury wrote of "The Next in Line": "The experience" (of seeing the mummies in the catacombs at Guanajuato, Mexico) "so wounded and terrified me, I could hardly wait to flee Mexico. I had nightmares about dying and having to remain in the halls of the dead with those propped and wired bodies. In order to purge my terror, instantly, I wrote 'The Next in Line.' One of the few times that an experience yielded results almost on the spot."

This quote is from page xvii of the introduction entitled "Drunk, and in Charge of a Bicycle," from "The Stories of Ray Bradbury," New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980, in case you need a source.

Elsewhere, he writes:
"I went." (To Mexico.)
"It was the worst two months of my life.
"I saw funerals every time we turned a corner in Zimapan, Taxco or Cuernavaca. Mostly small silver-foil coffins balanced on the heads of fathers striding to the graveyards carrying their tiny loves, freshly dead.
"I survived the days, but the nights were terrible. The funerals passed over my eyelids to slide down in darkness, I hated every day of poverty, a government that didn't care (still doesn't), and lost children being buried."

This quote is from pages xviii-xix of the introduction entitled "Dark Carnival Revisited" from the special Gauntlet Publications edition of "Dark Carnival." Springfield, Pennsylvania: Gauntlet Publications, 2001. On page xxi he continues:

"Enough, as I have said. After eight weeks, I fled Mexico, leaving my typewriter and a few items of clothing behind. I took the Greyhound Bus back to L. A., leaving Grant Beach stranded. He never forgave me.
"I was so glad to be home, I forgave myself instantly."

I know very little about this friend of Bradbury's except his name, Grant M. Beach, and the fact that "Dark Carnival" is dedicated to him. He was the one who enabled Ray to make the money to travel to Mexico by urging him to submit some of his better unpublished stories, three of which sold just before the trip.
It's unclear (to me, at least) why Bradbury's leaving left Beach stranded, as Ray is not and never has been a driver, so can't have been sharing the driving, unless they were traveling entirely on Ray's money. Perhaps more details will appear in Sam Weller's upcoming biography.
Anyhow, looking at "The Next in Line" in light of these facts, one may easily be tempted to picture some he-man Hemingwayesque adventurer (going to Mexico was Beach's idea) paired with a temperament such as Bradbury's, both imaginitive to excess and obstinate in the extreme about crossing the self-imposed boundaries placed by his own fears. Bradbury was never easily bullied. One story goes that, while in Ireland, John Huston tried to trick Ray into flying by requiring him to be in a certain place by a certain date. Ray found a way to make the journey in time by boat, one of many little ways he managed to aggravate Huston.

Although "The Next in Line" concerns a married couple, not a pair of male friends, lending the story fictional distance as well as emotional impact, it probably reflects on some levels Ray's problems with his friend. In the story, Marie's disorientation and isolation are increased by Joseph's lack of empathy to her feelings and almost total unwillingness to extend sympathy by behaving in any way to help make her any more comfortable.
Accomodating her husband's travel wishes, she finds herself in a strange country where she doesn't speak the language, which her husband does--making her unable to ask anyone else for the help he refuses to give. The feeling is strong that he CAN'T and WON'T help her, as he continues to belittle and ignore her misgivings, and she has nowhere to turn for help in saving herself from the approaching fate she envisions.
Bradbury mostly seems to side with the "paranoid" observer in these situations, "The Small Assassin" and "Fever Dream" being two prime examples. In "Skeleton," the main character enlarges his fears into a self-fulfilling prophecy, which could be the case in "The Next in Line" as well. It seems Joseph has failed to respect Maria's wishes, even concerning burial.

(Interesting sidelight: I don't know about the immediate postwar 1940s era, but in later times, and perhaps still, there was a huge toll in the form of a tax or fine for taking a body across the border from Mexico to the U. S. People went to such elaborate lengths as propping a corpse up between two living individuals in a car, to make it look as if the deceased were merely napping while crossing the border, to avoid paying this charge.)

Now, maybe Joseph found out about this charge and that swayed his mind not to try to transport Marie across the border, although with his previous attitude it doesn't seem he'd have paid a nickel to help see her on the way home, alive or dead. Maybe he was trying to get her body home by bundling it in the trunk, or maybe Marie made a run for it by bolting for the nearest Greyhound bus station, though, given the story's overall tone, I sincerely doubt these possibilities.
The magazines were an attempt to bring familiarity, and therefore control, into a terrifying situation, but they were a case of "too little, too late." Isolation and helplessness seem to be the factors which most overwhelm Marie. After all, the dead people in the catacombs don't seem like much fellowship for their companions (even if they could speak, it would be in Spanish) and they have no control over what the living choose to do with them, where they put them or how they treat them, including the exploitative display of their pathetic remains, which is still going on.

Check it out here:
http://www.mummytombs.com/mummylocator/group/guanajuato.htm

I didn't know any of this stuff. Excellent resource material.