ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 focuses on the subject of mortality and the Elliott Family’s unique relationship to issues of death and dying. In a stimulating discussion of the role of death in Bradbury’s oeuvre, Pagnoni Berns describes Bradbury’s early memory of seeing a funeral procession approaching a carnival: “Until a few years ago, I’d forgotten about that funeral. But I was running away from death, wasn’t I? I was running toward life”. The central thesis of this chapter maintains that death is part of life, and in more than one sense. Death is necessary not just as a way to a better appreciation of life but also as an ecological necessity. Animals are killed so others may live; entire groups of animals must be destroyed so the ecosystem may keep its balance, the death of animals becomes fertilizer for plants, and plagues and global catastrophes keep overpopulation from reaching unmanageable numbers. Thus, there is an ecological component of death, one that keeps life afloat. This dark realization is mostly kept at the margins of human thought, which enthrones life as a main principle. “Dark families” such as the Addams or the Munsters are distorted mirrors of this general ethos: rather than life, they joyfully embrace death. The Elliotts, the dark family created by Ray Bradbury, are no exception. They are creatures of old, people who live eternally as undead beings, death their lovely companion.
What the Elliotts brought is a posthuman ecological conscience: cats, spiders, and mice are part of the Family. Cecy can project herself into others, including animals and objects, revealing a posthuman attitude that decenters the anthropocene. Death, plagues, transmutation, ghosting, and aging are accepted—rather than rejected—as part of what “normal” people call life. They know that death is, indeed, part of life, that death is an ecological necessity. To the family, gods of life and death pose “as stiffly as tall rows of ancient corn and wheat”. As Granmere says, “we are the granaries of dark remembrance”. Further, “We accumulate. … Would you not admit, child, that forty billions deaths are a great wisdom, and those forty billion who shelve under the earth are a great gift to the living so that they might live?” Human life is sustained on the death of other humans and living beings and the Elliotts understand that. Timothy Morton calls “dark ecology” this depressing “ecological awareness” (5), which intermingles death and the uncanny with environment. This chapter traces the many instances in which dark ecology engages with the necessity of death within Bradbury’s From the Dust Returned. As young Timothy correctly asserts, “Not ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Angels and flowers”.
