Introduction:
The Murderer is an episode of the TV show The Ray Bradbury´s Theater, broadcast
from 1985 to 1992.
The episode in question is based on a short story
written in 1953 under the same tittle.
Born in 1920, Ray Bradbury was a young writer at
the moment he wrote this piece. The
author had already written his very important book of short stories The Martian
Cronicles at that time (1950)[1], and his
oustanding novel Farenheit 451 was
published during the same year that The
murderer was written.
Compact,
intense, in more than one way violent, all Bradbury´s main topics appear in The murderer: the man subdued by
technology, labeled by authorities as a maladjusted individual, and isolated in
the context of a superficial and
frivolous way of living.
Summary
At the
very beginning a psychitrist is asked to go to a big building. His mission is to
examine a prisioner whose nickname is “the
murderer”. In a very noisy environment, along his way toward the cell where the
prisioner has been locked up, the psyquiatrist must attend several calls. He is called by his son, his secretary and
his wife. All of them ask him to perform different tasks. However, as soon as
the psychiatrist enters the interrogation room, he feels silence and quietness.
Then, “the murderer” appears from a dark corner of the cell.
Mr. Brock is the prisioner interviewed and main
character. He explains to the doctor that the silence in the place is due to the
fact that he had just “kicked the radio to death”. Then, he takes the communication
device the doctor had in the lapel of his coat, bites the device and breaks it.
As soon as the doctor tries to record
the interview the murderer takes the doctor´s recorder machine and drops it in a pitcher of
water.
“The murderer” explains that he is a violent man
just with the “jak jak machines”. The
prisioner supports the idea that phones and devices drain the personality, and
demand continuous attention, like spoiled kids. Then, he describes his daily
routine as a one big listen, a whole screeching symphony, a radio visual cacophony.
Finnaly Mr Brock narrates to the doctor his first
act of rebellion. His first “victim” was his telephone, shoved into the garbage
disposal. After that he starts to destroy all the devices he finds in his way.
It is a rebellion, he declares, and supports the
idea that after him others will also come.
Technology invades the whole life, and a world without it seems to be inconceivable
for majority, he also declares.
The doctor thinks that Mr Brock´s attitude is an
extreme and violent position, but at the end, he realizes than “The murderer”,
at least in one aspect, is right because the Psychastrist starts to feel overcome by technology.
At the very end, the doctor also decided to
destroy the devices on his own desk.
Analysis
The
fact that “The Murderer” is presented as a villain in the short story is a sort
of irony. There are damages throughout the text
but not any crime. Devices are assumed as precious, valuable and sacred
things in society. To start a fight against them is considered a crime.
However, his conception of technology
is extreme. Technology isn´t something negative in itself. The connotation –negative
or positive- depends on the way that people use it, and also technological
tools.
The character lives according to his ideas,
trying to improve the society living conditions putting his own deep beliefs into practice, but in this way, he
asumes as unique concept his own, and tries to fight to impose it. Nonetheless,
that seems to be the author´s resource to put technology on the spot, exaggerating
its power, presence and significance.
Mr. Brock´s moral compass, finally, adresses him into the
penal legal system. He is ready to accept that social comdemation because he
assumes himself as a hero.
If we think that The murderer was written seventy years ago we will realize how
visionary Ray Bradbury was in this short piece.
Nowadays, technology shapes us to such an extent
that surely was inconcibable for readers
in 1953 but not for a visionary writer.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario