THE DEEP ONES: "The Emissary" by Ray Bradbury

"The Emissary" by Ray Bradbury.

Discussion begins October 30, 2024.

First published in Dark Carnival (1947).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?58377

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The October Country
The Fourth Pan Book of Horror Stories
Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead

ONLINE VERSIONS

https://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2022/10/the-emissary.html

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgFcjGAOyTs

MISCELLANY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az1Cnro2-4w
https://www.wired.com/2011/10/ten-tales-by-ray-bradbury-to-get-you-in-the-hallow...
https://darkworldsquarterly.gwthomas.org/ray-bradbury-in-weird-tales/
https://raybradbury.com/
https://tinyurl.com/5n95b3cw

So Torry brought back, I guess, the late Miss Haight? I found the ending rather confusing (which perhaps deliberate).

This strikes me, in its lyrical prose and autumnal setting, quintessential Bradbury.

We're primed to think it's Miss Haight returning, perhaps stinking of the grave, but I suppose it could be someone else.

One wonders if Steven King took this for his inspiration of Pet Semetary.

This story came up in the 75 Books challenge Ray Bradbury readalong, as The October Country is the subject of th readalong. I've been trying to contribute (the invitation to join in came here and to the Gothic Literature group) but haven't had the free time I'd hoped for.

I was late to the party even this early in the book and what I might have written would mrely have been echoing the previous comments, but i did write this:

There isn't, to be honest, much that I can add to the discussion. If I can turn back to Joel Lane's long essay on Bradbury' weird fiction, "The October Revolution", {in issues 5 and 6 of Wormwood and reprinted in This Spectacular Darkness} he uses this story to show the stylistic changes made between some stories original magazine appearances, or their first book publication in Dark Carnival. For example, in the revised version Martin's family name is dropped and Dog loses his original name ("Torry") to become "just Dog, easing the transition from the real to the metaphorical." and claims

What was pointedly suggestive in the first version has become a quiet, fatalistic implication that hides beneath the surface of the text. It is through this serious, understated recognition of horror that the mythic aspects of the story show through: the emissary is Hermes, the messenger who mediates between the living and the dead. Martin is an Orpheus who cannot leave Eurydice behind, because she has come to find him. The realm of the dead is where we live.

I don't entirely see it this way myself. I was more drawn to the idea of the story celebrating Dog as man's (or rather boy's) best friend, "bringing things back" to Martin and - because this is, after all, a horror story, how he does the job all too well.

As I've been thinking through over in that thread today, but thinking about this story in particular, Bradbury's heightened poetic language and psychological insight, and sympathy for his characters, tends to deflect from the often EC Comics-style gruesomeness that he often goes for in his horror stories.

The idea of an Orpheus who, rather than go fetch the dead, has the dead fetched for him unasked for, seems to me to stretch the analogy beyond breaking point.

I also read this story in The October Country, which as previously discussed made some stylistic changes from the originally published version.

Overall, I found this story a thrill to read. Even beyond COVID quarantine, I've had times in my life when I was unable to leave my house for weeks at a time. When Dog doesn't come home and Bradbury describes that 'the world was a picture under glass, untouchable. The world was dead,' I related to that a lot. Now I wish I had an emissary of my own, to bring the world in when I can't experience it myself! This story was so evocative.

And of course, what does a dog do besides dig and fetch what his master requires?