[Tyr Zalo Hawk]: 712.Essays.The City in TIM

Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man is full of stories of intrigue, mystery, murder, revenge, and even the occasional glimpse of world peace. Of all these stories though, none was more intriguing to read than the intricate tale of "The City." It has every element that is needed for a well-written story: a dynamic main character, a sense of mystery, thought-provoking plot twists that keeps you turning pages, and an ending that leaves you satisfied, but wanting more. Most impressive of all though is that Bradbury has managed to weave all these things into a masterpiece.
Our story takes place in a city that lies hundreds of millions of billions of miles away from Earth. This sleeping city is also the main character of the tale. The city starts asleep, waiting and watching for thousands of years until the day it is supposed to awaken. That day comes with the arrival of the other characters: a crew of explorers from Earth. As its guests came inside to inspect it, they were weighed, measured, smelled, and all was tallied and totalled for the cities use. "The city opened secret nostrils in its black walls... the Ears awoke... the window trembled... thinned... dilated imperceptibly, like the irises of numberless eyes... Now the city was fully awake!" Free from its sleep, the city then proceeds with it mission, the one it had been waiting twenty thousand years to complete. A mission of merciless, calculated killing; a mission of revenge. While each of the other characters surved their purpose in the plot, it was the city that made the story a story at all. And so, from slumber to slaughter, the city makes its mark on the reader as not only a unique setting, but also as an unforgettable character.
While the plot in itself is very basic, a city that sleeps for twenty thousand years, only to wake and kill Earthlings before 'reviving' them in order to kill the rest of their race, it is in the smaller details that we receive all of the truly chilling and captivating moments. Just after landing, one of the men suggests that they leave, but the city cannot allow such things. "Rotors glided, liquids glittered in small creeks... A formula and a concoction... a fresh vapor blew out over the invaders." The smell was one of fresh, green grass, one calculcated to entice the men inside, despite some of their initial objections. It all worked out perfectly, just as intended. Only moments later though, the same suspicion is raised and one of the crew, a young man named Smith, begins to rush back towards the ship. As he runs, the others chase him, all except the captain who is taken below by the city. "Hung by his feet, a razor drawn across his throat, another down his chest, his carcass instantly emptied... the captain died." He died so that the city could know that it was correct in its calculations, and when it knew, it wasted no time in seeing that its mission could be completed. "New hands began a fight of motion. Into the wet interior (of the captain) were placed organs of copper, brass, silver, aluminum, rubber and silk... a platinum brain... the body was sewn tight, the incisions waxed, healed... perfect, fresh, new." And once its pawn was perfect, it stopped the only radical in its plan. "On the street the captain reappeared, raised his gun and fired. Smith fell, a bullet in his heart." Just when it could be thought that nothing else would happen, the city always manages to pull out its ace in the hole, the twist of the plot that makes it all keep going.
Revenge. A simple word for most, but a driving force in "The City." Revenge is why the city kills, why it exists, why it slept and waited, why it awoke on that one fateful day, and even the name of the city is Revenge. "At long last you've come!" The city tells the Earthmen near the end of the story. "The revenge will be carried out to the last detail." So it was indeed, this revenge that had taken a mere twenty thousand years to come to fruition. Once it was complete, the city was allowed to die, its only purpose fulfilled, satisfied, given rest. Revenge was the entire reason the story was able to exist. Without it there would be no city, no wait, no murder, nothing but explorers finding an empty planet and going on with their business. It was the driving force of "The men who died... the old race who once lived here. The people whom the Earthmen left to die... and the men of that old race, dreaming of the day when Earthmen might return, built this city...", and so the story was born, and so it died when its reason left on a ship bound for Earth again.
Through a city, built for only one purpose, as well as the intricate way that the dream it was built on becoming reality, "The City" has became a story worthy of noting, of remembering. Although a simple tale of revenge is all too common in this day and age, Bradbury throws in enough of a twist to make it captivating. And who knows, maybe it will be true one day. That is the thought that lingers with us, let us pray it remains only a thought.

© Tyr Hawkaluk (2004-Present)