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The Illustrated Man Theme Essay

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Ray Bradbury wrote a variety of short science fiction stories and added them together to make an overall collection titled The Illustrated Man. The Illustrated Man has stories that all take place in the futuristic, Dystopian America. The overall theme of this novel is accepting one’s fate. Narrowing down the overall theme, the stories of “The Last Night of the World”, “Marionettes, Inc.,” and “Kaleidoscope”, all share the common overall theme of looking back on life and seeing all the things one has done with their life, and the things one never got to do. While one is living, they don’t tend to look back on their life until they know it’s coming to an end. These stories are all focused on that exact time of the protagonist’s lives. The stories “The Last Night of the World,” “Marionettes, Inc.,” and “Kaleidoscope,” from The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury, all have a common theme: Reflecting on one's life when he or she knows it is coming to an end. In “The Last Night of the World”, the parents of two girls realize that their last day on Earth would …show more content…

That theme is retrospecting on your life, and seeing what you’ve done with your life that you wanted to complete, but also what you haven’t completed. In “The Last Night…”, a man reflects on his life with his wife as they know that the end of the world is approaching. In “Marionettes, Inc.”, a man reflects on the trip to Rio he never got to take because a robot is taking over his life. In “Kaleidoscope”, an astronaut named Hollis has to reflect over his life as he is plummeting to his death in space after his rocket blows up. When we are dying, we find out if we have completed our life goals, and remember the ones we forgot. After reading these stories I think that we should look back on everyday, so there will never be a goal we forget to

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