Critiques of Domesticity in Ray Bradbury’s Cold War Fiction

Abstract

This paper explores the interactions of nostalgic and gothic tendencies in Ray Bradbury’s representations of the home, a recurring symbol in his fiction of the postwar period and in the American cultural imagination of the time. Bradbury’s fiction complicates various ideals associated with and invested in the postwar American home, and paired stories often suggest different responses to specific domestic themes. The essay concludes by arguing that several Bradbury stories offer possible alternatives to the problematic ideal of the “detached,” “nuclear” family home. The argument thus also usefully recontextualizes a number of Bradbury’s best-known stories.