has anyone read this story? what are the major themes, issues? thanks

Here are the only comments on it I've found on this board so far:

pixi
posted 06-16-2002 10:25 PM
Killer baby from the 50's. would make a great film. Mr. Bradbury captures the edge between reality and illusion in everything he writes. His lines are so fine that i re-read them over and over as if i might have missed a color in his sentence...

TygerSun
posted 07-10-2002 04:25 PM
That would be a great movie. Bradbury always suprised me by writing about things that no one in the world would have thought of. I wish more people my age would read his work, but they are definitely missing out.

Based on how often this story gets anthologized, I have to assume many have read it. I just re-read it and enjoyed it more this time through than before.

I think one thing the story is tied to is the question of post-partum depression -- a topic that didn't seem to be big in the days this story would originally have come out. The story deals with this woman's honest feelings about her newborn -- feelings that are not well-regarded -- and those feelings are ignored (at some level) by her husband and doctor. As the story unfolds, the woman is initially told to go to a psychiatrist (because, obviously, everyone loves their innocent little babies); but eventually, the husband and then the doctor have to come to grips with the possibility that the "innocent" child (whom the father eventually names Lucifer) is a cold, calculating murderer. In the end, her feelings and fears are vindicated, rather than being ignored and patronized. The idea that others ignore and discount a person's feelings is dealt with in another Bradbury story, "Fever Dream", where the boy feels he is being taken over by an alien being, but no one believes him.

In this sense, some of the thematic element here is isolation. The woman and the boy are alone in their feelings and cannot share those feelings with others because no one will take them seriously. The theme of isolation is also taken up in another Bradbury story, "Heavy Set".

The story begins with her feelings of being murdered by the child as he is being born. It ends up having to be a Ceserean birth and is said to be a dangerous birth. How many women, going through labor, feel that they are being murdered, or, at least, have given up control of thier body to forces beyond her rational/conscious capacities? At some force, the labor takes over. Throughout the story, Alice feels like she has no control over much of anything.

At some point, she actually tries to murder the baby, but finds she is unable to do it. Is she a bad person because of this? We view the crimes over the last few years of mothers murdering thier own children, and see these as among the most heinous of crimes. But the depiction of her attempt to smother her baby is almost sympathetically portrayed.

The writing is great. You get inside Alice's head immediately. There is no melo-drama, but the reader understands where Alice is (emotionally) from the very opening sentence. Her fears are presented with both sympathy and realism. But the ones who are supposed to support and care for her (the doctor and her husband) are unable to take her feelings seriously. Although eventually, each one accepts Alice's truth, it is too late to help her. By the time the doctor accepts the truth, it is too late to help her husband.

The references to the child are also always understated and minimalist. Some glistening of moisture on his face, some self-aware staring, a slight movement here or there.

The end seems to imply that the doctor will win -- as he brings out the shiny scalpel -- but the toddler has already successfully killed two adults. But the child has been able to act against people who didn't believe, who were alone in their beliefs, or who were incapacited. Does the doctor have more success now that he is actively seeking to kill the child? The story doesn't say.

Some of the dialog is also great. Alice is telling David why she thinks the baby is a threat. People are protected by love and by law. The baby is ignorant of both, so he has no restraints against acting totally in his self-interest. In his conversation with the docter (after the husband believes the child is a murderer), the husband describes motives for the child to kill. The primary one is revenge for taking him out of a protected environment and making him live in THIS life -- a life of noise, cold, dependence, etc.

In the end, though, this story is just a great murder story, with wonderful plot development and characters who are to be taken seriously. The ambiguity of the ending is also great. But the doctor knows, he is armed, and he is on the hunt . . .

"He [the doctor] walked downstairs, opened his medical bag on the chair, took something out of it and held it in his hands.
Something rustled down the hall. Something very small and very quiet. [doctor] Jeffords turned rapidly.
I had to operate to bring you into this world, he thought. Now I guess I can operate to take you out of it. . .
He took half a dozen slow, sure steps foward into the hall. He raised his hand into the sunlight.
'See baby! Something bright -- something pretty!'
A scalpel."

Very good story.

In the liner notes for a recording of this story, Bradbury wrote about the initial reaction of prospective publishers: "What will the pregnant women of America think?" After its appearance, he heard from some of them. "They were most unhappy." This is a wonderful depiction of post-partum depression and disillusionment. Perhaps the best story dealing with post-partum psychosis is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper," a classic familiar to any devoted anthology reader.

I wasn't familiar with Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" but found it in a Norton Anthology and read it yesterday.

While there are obvious differences (the baby doesn't murder anyone!), there are also interesting similarities. Bradbury's ability to capture the woman's (Alice) feelings about not loving the baby, and the reaction of her husband and doctor in patronizing her feelings and in not taking her feelings seriously are right in line with each other. In the Yellow Wallpaper, she repeatedly says things to herself, like, "What is one to do?", etc. She is told to relax and wait it out, she is told she'll get over it. She is talked about in the third person. These are all commonalities between the two stories.

The story is well worth a read and comparison to Bradbury's "The Small Assassin". Thanks for bringing it up, Dandelion. I had not heard of it and enjoyed reading it.

Reading up on the author's life adds real insight to that story. I didn't learn about it until in college, we had a book called "Seven Women" or something. Her father left the family; as a result, her mother thought it best to teach her children never to become attached to anyone in life. She would never show them any affection until they were asleep. Charlotte even tried sticking pins in her arm to stay awake for when her mother would come in at night to hold the kids. When she had a baby of her own, she lost it, and people were, in large part, most unsympathetic. There was nothing wrong with the kid, but she finally had to send her away, and felt terrible about it. The story was filmed a few years ago on PBS. They did a great job with it.

Not directly relevant to Bradbury, I suppose, but does involve a writer on a common theme: In the Norton introduction, it says she went to California, was granted a divorce (sounds like she initiated it because she thought the marriage would make her insane, but the short text is not unarbitrarily clear on this point), sent her daughter to live with her ex-husband (who had remarried a writer-friend of hers) and then pursued writing and lecturing on feminist issues.

In your post, you use the word "lost" her child. Did she lose her child because her husband sued for custody and she lost the suit, or did she send the baby to her ex, so she could pursue writing and lecturing (as the Norton text implies)?

The Norton introduction does overview what a bizarre, unaffectionate childhood she had. Father deserted them, he was essentially non-responsive to her attempts to establish a relationship with him, her mother withheld all affection from the kids, so they would avoid disappointment in future failed relationships, etc.


[This message has been edited by Mr. Dark (edited 10-19-2002).]

Entering "Charlotte Perkins Gilman" at www.google.com yields a staggering amount of information. Her papers are at Harvard, she has been the subject of biographies, and has a society devoted to her. There are several websites for "The Yellow Wallpaper," and the story, in the form of its original publication, is available online, complete with illustrations! It was hard to find one site with much information about her child. From the article I read in college (longer ago than I'd care to go into) I was left with the impression that when no older than five, Katherine was put on a train, perhaps alone, to go live with relatives, and her mother never saw her again. Online information reveals she was actually nine, was accompanied by an adult relative on the train, and went to live with her father. Her mother granted full custody to the father, feeling it was in the child's best interests. She remained involved in Katherine's upbringing, and, after the death of her ex-husband, moved to be near her daughter, so evidently they got along much better than the impression I'd formed. Her problems were with her husband and the role in which he'd cast her, not in any dislike of her child.

I had not read "The Small Assasin" before this weekend, but I knew it was in one of my books...namely The October Country. I read it on the way to the mountains this weekend. I find it fascinating, because I can see how a woman might feel this way about her child. Throughout the story we can't tell if the child is ACTUALLY a killer until the end when he turns on the gas while his father is sleeping. I also read "The Scythe"...two perfect reads for an October afternoon drive through the country. I was in the passenger seat of course..

[This message has been edited by Keli Linda (edited 10-21-2002).]

What do you think about number one?

I love it! Bradbury was right all along!

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
Bradbury was right all along!

He often is.