Ray Bradbury's story "Rust": summary and analysis

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Brilliant works always push the foreheads of supporters of different opinions, forcing the reader to support and hate one of the parties. This is how Ray Bradbury's story "Rust" works, the summary of which is not capable of conveying the intensity of passions without quotes.

The author is an omniscient but cold-blooded witness of the dialogue between two military people. One of them is a warrior to the core, and the other is a sergeant by chance, a boy who no longer wants war and lives in most of us. It is better to read this entire work in ten minutes than to look for a brief retelling of "Rust" by Bradbury, a story with a deep psychological context, through which the true skill of a science fiction writer is revealed.

What is Rust about?

Sergeant Hollis, an intelligent but troubled young man with an inner dilemma, comes to speak with the Colonel. He heard rumors about the unimportant mental he alth of the soldier. However, the conversation takes an unexpected turn. Hollis rejects offer to transfer to another district, refuses to participate inmilitary actions, he does not want more wars. Moreover, the sergeant puts forward the fantastic assumption that one day all weapons will disappear from the face of the earth. The colonel responds to the assumptions with military cynicism: the battles will never stop. People will bare their fists, use their teeth and claws like beasts, but they will never be able to refuse confrontation. The sergeant responds with a sharp lunge, having long ago invented a device that causes a "nervous shock" in gunmetal and turns it into rust. The conclusion is unequivocal - the military needs a doctor. The Colonel takes a cartridge-capped pen out of his pocket to give Hollis a referral to the doctor, showing that he didn't believe a single word. This fills the sergeant, who has been thinking about the fate of the weapon for a whole month, with determination. Hollis declares that he will take advantage of his vacation and leave the camp for a few minutes, says goodbye to his senior in rank and leaves the office. Some time later, the colonel begins to discuss the state of the sergeant with the doctor on the phone and, about to make a note with a pen with a cap from a rifle cartridge, he finds only red dust … Rust. He immediately calls the sentry and without hesitation orders to catch up and shoot Hollis. But he can't follow orders. No one else can use the weapon. Smashing a chair against the wall and arming himself with a strong leg, the colonel rushes after the main criminal who encroached on the dictatorship of weapons. Rushing like a primitive man, devoid of intelligence.

Psychological portraits of characters

Mixing idealism andrealism is the main motive on which Ray Bradbury's story "Rust" is built. The summary, unfortunately, does not convey the changes taking place with the characters. Hollis is an open person, a dreamer and an idealist who is used to telling the truth. Although he looks a little naive, addressing his words to an ideological enemy - a colonel, fed and brought up by the war. The behavior of the officer changes throughout the story. At first, the colonel expresses sympathy, and then shouts: "Kill!" It's simple: the fear of losing your job, the meaning of life, speaks inside.

What did the author want to say?

Trying to convey the essence of the conflict through dialogue, in the end, the narrator switches to descriptions. colorful. Cruel. Realistic. He begins to speak the language of psychological imagery that pervades Ray Bradbury's Rust. The summary could look like this: in order to reveal the true character of a person, you need to show him the dreams of other people. Fight for war or live without war. The two points of view are far from the present state of affairs, they are at diametrically opposite ends. The dreamer eliminates the weapon, the bloodthirsty hunter makes it from improvised means. That's what R. Bradbury says. Rust is first and foremost an illusion, a pipe dream.

Perhaps the author wrote a message to people about the need to make the world a better place, and for this he came up with a creator sergeant. In contrast, he portrayed an anti-hero - a callous pragmatist who lives by standards. Yes, Ray's storyBradbury's "Rust", a summary of which is a retelling of the dreams of a world without war, can be interpreted in two ways. But, most likely, the author, being a real dreamer and inventor of a means against weapons, destroyed his own idea and said that there would always be wars. And this does not require machine guns and bombs.