The October Country by Ray Bradbury
"The October Country" is a collection of nineteen stories by Ray Bradbury, featuring fourteen reworked tales from his earlier work, "Dark Carnival," and five new stories. This anthology delves into themes of the macabre and the surreal, showcasing an array of characters grappling with dark obsessions, existential fears, and the inevitability of death. The stories are marked by their eerie atmospheres and often focus on outcasts and marginalized individuals seeking acceptance in a world that ridicules them.
Notable narratives include "The Dwarf," which explores themes of jealousy and identity through the cruel manipulation of a carnival worker, and "Homecoming," where a human child must navigate life in a family of vampires. Bradbury frequently examines death in unique ways, as seen in "The Scythe," where a farmer's attempts to evade mortality lead to catastrophic consequences. Other tales feature characters who wrestle with morbid curiosities, such as a woman's obsession with mummies in "The Next in Line." Overall, "The October Country" offers a haunting exploration of human fears and the darker side of existence, making it a compelling read for those intrigued by the supernatural and the complexities of life and death.
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Subject Terms
The October Country
First published: 1955
Type of work: Stories
Type of plot: Fantasy—cultural exploration
Time of work: The first half of the twentieth century
Locale: Various locations in the United States and Mexico
The Plot
The October Country consists of nineteen stories, fourteen of them reworked versions of stories originally collected in Dark Carnival (1947). The remaining five are collected here for the first time in book form. These haunting stories explore none of the themes that dominate Ray Bradbury’s later work. They are weird tales of ghosts, vampires, and everyday people caught in impossible situations or saddled with dark obsessions.
Bradbury’s characters often are objects of ridicule, outcasts who crave acceptance. In “The Dwarf,” Ralph Banghart, a carnival worker, runs a mirror maze. He shows Amiee, a coworker, the antics of a dwarf who frequents the maze to see himself stretched tall in one of the convex mirrors. Amiee sympathizes with the dwarf, and the jealous Ralph replaces the convex mirror with a concave one. The dwarf finds his reflection further dwarfed and runs away screaming and suicidal. “Homecoming” tells of a human child struggling for acceptance in a family of vampires.
Many of the stories deal with death—its certainty and the ways people react to this certainty. In “The Scythe,” a poor farmer inherits the job of Grim Reaper. Each day he must harvest blades of wheat that represent those scheduled to die. He tries to spare his family, but they are trapped between life and death. In his attempt to free them, he slashes wildly and indiscriminately at the wheat, thus beginning World War II.
Some characters are obsessed with avoiding death. In “The Next in Line,” Joseph and Marie visit mummies in a Mexican catacomb. Marie becomes obsessed with the mummies. She makes Joseph promise that if she dies in this town he will not leave her to become one of them. She does die, and Joseph returns to the United States alone. In “There Was an Old Woman,” Aunt Tildy simply refuses to die. She pursues her body to the funeral home and manages to reclaim it from the bewildered staff, even though an autopsy is under way.
At times, Bradbury’s characters embrace death as having poignant possibility, compared to a pointless life. In “The Cistern,” aging sisters sit talking while rain falls outside. Juliet embroiders tablecloths, and Anna embroiders a tale about the cistern outside and the storm drains that run beneath the city. She tells of a man who has laid dead in the cistern for years. He is joined by the body of a woman. When the rains come, the bodies are lifted to their feet by the rising water, and they spin and dance together. Anna insists that her lost love is the dead man, and she goes to the flooding cistern to join him. In “Jack-in-the-Box,” a boy is trapped by his mother, for his entire life, in a sprawling house. He is unaware that there is any universe outside the two of them and the rooms they inhabit. When he finally ventures outside, he assumes that this freedom must be what it means to be dead.
Other fears that obsess Bradbury’s characters come from unlikely sources. In “The Skeleton,” a man feels threatened by the bones lurking beneath his skin; in “The Wind,” a man believes he is the object of a personal vendetta on the part of the wind. Parents in “The Small Assassin” fear being murdered by their newborn.
Bibliography
Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury. New York: Chelsea House, 2001.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Chelsea House, 2001.
Eller, Jonathan R., and William F. Touponce. Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2004.
Reid, Robin Ann. Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
Touponce, William F. Naming the Unnameable: Ray Bradbury and the Fantastic After Freud. Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1997.
Weist, Jerry, and Donn Albright. Bradbury, an Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor. New York: William Morrow, 2002.
Weller, Sam. The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury. New York: William Morrow, 2005.