Many of his over 35 books and more than 100 short stories can be tied together by the two facets of his style. The short stories “The Whole Town's Sleeping” and “Bang! Your Dead!” both have situational irony while the stories “The Rocket” and “The Flying Machine” share the subject of science fiction.
The genre of a story is the type of story it is. Stories with the genre of Science Fiction for instance all have a scientific basis or take place in the future. Two of Ray Bradbury's stories, “The Rocket” and “The Flying Machine” both share this genre. “The Rocket” as it's name suggests, is based upon a rocket. The main character is a junk man and is given a rocket to boil down and sell the metal for money. However this man has a fascination with space and rockets and wants to ride the rocket with his family to the stars. This story line is science fiction at its best. This is because it has a connection to science, as shown with the rocket, and to fiction. How many people are given a rocket? Not many. So therefore this story would be classified as science fiction. The other story, “The Flying Machine”, revolves around a man who invents a flying machine in Ancient China. It is a known fact that the first people to invent a flying machine were Orville and Wilber Wright. Knowing that and the fact that it takes place in Ancient China, this story could not have happened and there fore is science fiction. These two stories were connected through a central genre of science fiction. Therefore, one facet of Ray Bradbury's writing style is a common genre science fiction.
Situational Irony is when the reader expects one thing to happen and the exact opposite does. In the two short stories, “The Whole Town Was Sleeping” and “Bang! You're Dead!”, the ending had situational irony. In “The Whole Town Was Sleeping”, the main character is worried about being killed by a murderer as she is walking around the town. However in the end, the murderer is waiting inside her home. This is an example of situational irony because the reader expects her to die while she's walking in the woods and when she arrives home she is save. However, she is eventually killed, to the surprise of the reader, in her own home. In “Bang! Your Dead!” the main character believes the war is a game and willingly runs straight through the front lines believing that he cannot be harmed while the officer stays back yelling at him to come back cause he'll get killed. The reader believes that the main character will eventually die and the officer will survive but rather, it's quite the opposite. The officer dies trying to copy the main character while the main character gets wounded but survives. Due to the fact that these two stories contain situational irony, it can be concluded that situational irony is a facet of Ray Bradbury's style.
In conclusion, Ray Bradbury's style includes situational irony and a common genre of science fiction. Ray Bradbury is an excellent author who can leave anyone puzzled, happy, and sad at the same time. He makes great use of imagery and his ironic endings always leave the reader bewildered. His writings have touched three generations of children who now fondly recall some of his more celebrated titles. He will be missed when he stops writing.
