1Ray Bradbury (1920-2012), an American author and screenwriter from Illinois, was most famous for his science fiction and fantasy stories. Although he started gaining recognition through his numerous short stories, Bradbury first achieved a breakthrough as an author in 1950 following the publication of his novel The Martian Chronicles and later won worldwide recognition with his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 in 1953. Still, while he is most well-known for his science fiction and fantasy stories, barely anything has been written about his short crime fiction. Among these latter works, the relatively unknown short story “The Very Gentle Murders,” published in the 1996 Quicker Than the Eye, is of particular interest. It revolves around the two octogenarian, married protagonists, Joshua and Missy Enderby, whose sole preoccupation is to find a way to get rid of the other through murder.

2The unusual aspect of this short story stems from the fact that the characters seem to be almost completely indifferent to their partner’s attempts to kill them, but also to the whole idea of death, their own, their partner’s or that of their guests. A dark and self-deprecating humor fills the story, confusing the reader’s expectations about how the characters will react and behave. An even more troubling element is the euphoria with which the characters partake in their shared “dying game,” as they call it, but also the fact that they act very ambiguously with each other. Because of the clear resolution of the plot which ends with Joshua and Missy’s shared death from drinking poison, the mystery does not lie in who committed the murder nor in how it was done, but instead in the motive behind their murderous desires. This article endeavors to show that while on a surface level Bradbury’s story might seem realistic and straightforward because of its clear resolution, there seems to be another dimension which combines the structure of mirrors and the influence of the carnival tradition. While the most noticeable echoes of these themes appear in the narration and the descriptions, ultimately, the central force behind this whole apparatus leads back to the protagonists themselves and the mirroring in their relationship, which is the cause of numerous deaths.

Both Sides of the Mirrors: Language, Actions, and the “Dying Game”

3Close analysis of the speech patterns and linguistic devices used in “The Very Gentle Murders” reveals that the short story is structured in accordance with a system of mirrors. “Mirroring” not only constantly appears throughout the story, but it also fundamentally shapes it. “Mirroring” can be defined as a mechanism which physically reflects an image, but which also figuratively creates reflections through parallels, mainly generated by repetitions. Traditionally, mirroring is identified in literature with the imagery of mirrors and their interaction with the characters and the plot:

Mirror scenes can be, as the name suggests, a moment when a character literally sees their reflection in a mirror, such as a wall mirror, a make-up mirror, a vanity mirror, the rear-view mirror of a car, a reflection in a puddle or lake, or the bottom of a glass. They can also be less obvious, for example, where a character sees themselves (differently) reflected in the eyes of [another character] or stands opposite a painting that shows them age and become more grotesque while outwardly they remain young and beautiful (Dorian Gray). Alternatively, a mirror scene can be more abstract and conceptual, such as the way in which Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is reflected in the wild and hostile landscapes of the Yorkshire moors in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. . . . Mirrors and reflections can be used as a recurring theme throughout a story, or even provide an allegory for otherness by having water, the sea, the desert and many other devices reflect a language of secret desires. (Kristian)

4However, Bradbury does not exploit mirroring solely through imagery; he shapes his narration so that it becomes its very embodiment. For instance, mirroring occurs when words that are attributed to a particular character are used alongside their antonyms to form parallels and sometimes even paradoxes; but also when the imagery behind the words alludes to aspects of mirrors, such as glasses, crystals, or other surfaces that reflect. When it comes to actions, repetition may produce metaphorical reflections, or parallels, which contribute to the plot structure as they create a symmetry in the narrative scheme. This system enables the “dying game”—as the protagonist Joshua Enderby calls it (“Murders” 99)—to frame both sides of a metaphorical mirror. On one side, the diverse reflections portray reality and, on the other side, the protagonists’ figures and psyches are reflected as if through a distorting mirror, morphing the visible consequences of their ageing into an imaginary childhood—physically and morally—when they play their murderous game.

5It is not surprising that Bradbury chose to shape his story around the aesthetics of mirrors, not only because mirrors form a central element in several of his other works, such as in The Halloween Tree (1972) or Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962), but also because, for him, the artist’s role is to produce multi-dimensional works which can be understood in a variety of ways. His works are thus not to be taken as merely realistic. On the contrary, as Jonathan Eller writes, Bradbury found that the writer and the artist must “work with what is there in three dimensions, flatten it to two, yet find a fourth beneath the obvious look. It must be a flash discovered in that instant of genius discovery and intuitively snapped shut in a box before it can cry out or escape” (Beyond 320). It can therefore be said that, in “The Very Gentle Murders,” a deeply embedded second structure operates on two levels, both revealing and distorting reality.

6In the reflections on the “realistic” side of the mirroring apparatus charged with representing the Enderbys’ lives, repetitions in language and action form the pillars the whole mirroring machinery relies on. Mirrors appear throughout the story both on the physical level (through references to reflecting surfaces and objects) and on the metaphorical (through patterns, descriptions, and repetitions). When it comes to language, Bradbury makes use of the lexical field of glasses, crystals, and diamonds which, in many instances, act as reflecting surfaces, physically speaking. Items of jewelry appear, their glare even “blinding” Joshua (“Murders” 98). They are described as “little glittery planets” (98) that “sparked and glittered” (98). Bradbury emphasizes the fact that his characters are always wearing these items. Missy, for example, wears a cobalt dress, “heavily iced with luncheon jewels” (98), shimmery bracelets, necklaces and earrings, and Joshua has an eye-catching, dazzling ring (98). Bradbury also continuously refers to the presence of glasses, which the protagonists drink from, before or after each murder attempt (98, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 107). At the end of the story, after Joshua has dropped his glass on the floor (108), the author draws a comparison between the upcoming deaths of the characters and the shattering of the glass itself. In a way, the shattered glass, the surface of which can reflect light, prefigures the shattering—and so, the deaths—of both the mirroring apparatus and the characters. As Bradbury writes about Missy, not long before she dies, “her laugh tinkled” (108), like broken glass. It is worth noting that the Enderbys’ house is home to the “Fontainebleau Palace crystal hangings” (104) as well, which the characters obsess over. Other words, however, which allude to a more metaphorical kind of mirroring, are repeated time and time again, such as the verbs “do,” “don’t,” “guess,” “think,” “froze,” “gasped,” etc. The mirroring quality of these terms is not to be found in their meaning, but instead it is based on their occurrences and functions in the narrative. These words structure the story, appearing in a symmetrical manner when an unexpected turn of events occurs or when the characters misunderstand each other; they are most of the time emphasized through the use of italics. Their repetitive use at key moments thus not only shapes the storyline in a symmetrical mirroring, both in accounts of the reactions of the two protagonists and in conversations between them, but these words also punctuate the course of the narration in a clear pattern constructed with visible parallelism.

7The most obvious repetitions and echoes occur in the characters’ murder attempts. Joshua and Missy seem to mirror each other, both in their drinking and in their murderous plots. While Missy tries to strangle her husband during the opening scene, she is said to “gasp” (97) and her hands “froze” (98). These details appear at different times. Missy regularly gasps and freezes when it dawns on her that her murder attempt has either failed or has led to an unexpected aftermath; and when she goes to check on Mr. Gowry, a collateral victim who falls down the stairs Missy has boobytrapped for her husband, she reacts with “her hand clutched to her throat” (101), which mirrors the opening scene and Missy’s first murder attempt on her husband. In the same way, while Joshua is being unsuccessfully strangled by his wife in the opening scene, the author writes that he “opened his eyes wide” (97) for a moment, and then relaxed. Joshua does the exact same thing during the final scene when he realizes that he really is about to die, opening his eyes wide for a moment and then ceasing to care (108). It is worth noting that the characters are said to display the same reactions whenever they drink.

8Drinking is a pattern which continuously gives rhythm to the story, oscillating between Missy and Joshua. In fact, the storyline is punctuated with references to drinking but also, more generally, to poisoning (in nine out of the thirteen pages). Such references act as mirroring tools as they constantly remind readers of the characters’ upcoming deaths, but also serve as macabre premonitions of their fate. On the second page, Missy declares that she will not stoop to using poison on her husband, yet they both die as a result of consuming poisoned drinks. A pattern is thus visible: Missy and Joshua’s words and actions create a symmetry which frames the main narrative. The parallels are visible in the predictions the characters make. For example, Joshua says “‘That’s a double-edged sword, you’ll fall on it!’” (102) after Missy announces she will use “‘rat poisons, mouse-killers and bug-exterminators’” (102) on the food. Other parallels emerge with their constant misunderstandings. The confusion felt by Joshua and Missy about each other’s actions is mirrored when, on the first page, Missy, frustrated, asks her husband “‘Why don’t you, oh, why don’t you?’” (97), to which Joshua responds, “‘Why don’t I what?’” (97), which occurs again later with Joshua telling her “‘Ah, no, no, you don’t!’” (106), to which she responds, “‘Don’t what?’” (106). The misunderstanding ends on the penultimate page when Joshua exclaims “‘You what?!’” (108), to which Missy responds later, finally, “‘We did!’” (108), right before they acknowledge their impending deaths.

10This regression into childhood is also made explicit on numerous occasions when the lexical field of childhood is combined with that of games. Right from the beginning, the narrator describes Missy’s handling of her husband “as if he were a toy” (97), and later uses the adverb “gamely” (105), for example. There is also a recurring contrast between what can be seen and what is hidden. Not only do the Enderbys’ guests unknowingly, but rightly, point out that they are playing hide-and-seek (105), but this once again mirrors the beginning of the short story when “Missy was hidden behind jonquils in a crystal bowl and now peered out at her mummified husband. Both perceived that the other’s hands shook” (98). The fact that the game takes place in a house full of reflecting surfaces—both physically and metaphorically speaking—makes it look like they are living in a hall of mirrors, with both normal and distorting mirrors, such as may be found at a fairground. This is a plausible assumption as Jonathan Eller explains in Bradbury Beyond Apollo that “The Very Gentle Murders” was originally written during the late 1940s, at a time when Bradbury focused on writing short crime fiction featuring elements and settings from the world of carnivals and circuses (202-03). As he writes about Bradbury’s novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, “Bradbury had originally built up the terrors of the mirror maze and the centrality of the carousel’s ability to advance or regress age” (173), which seems to be the case as well, albeit on a more metaphorical level, in “The Very Gentle Murders.” In fact, just like children, the characters do not seem to anticipate the adult consequences of their “childish” game. Interestingly, as Lahna Diskin argues, children in Bradbury’s fiction are presented differently from adults, who have lost the freedom and carefree attitude that is only possible in childhood:

• 2 When Lahna Diskin talks about “Bradbury’s separate race,” she refers to the children in Bradbury’s (...)

Even when they behave maliciously, they are obeying their own credo, their own laws, which decree that they resist the inexorable transformation they will undergo when they migrate to adulthood. . . . Sometimes, murder is the kind of freedom practiced by members of Bradbury’s separate race. (24)2

11Yet, even though the characters react too late, Missy is ultimately still aware of the effects of the echoes or of the “mirroring” system in her house, from which she cannot escape, as she admits to her husband that “our target practice seems to wind up in ricochet” (“Murders” 106).

Mirroring and the Carnivalesque

12Mirroring does not occur solely in descriptions of actions, events, or in language usage, but also in Bradbury’s narrative techniques, mainly in terms of time and space management, narrative pace, and in the use of dark humor. In the collection’s afterword, Bradbury insists, first of all, on the major influence magic exerted over his story ideas and his overall vision of what the writer’s vocation ought to be. Interestingly, he starts off by explaining how he intended to become a magician before wishing to start a career in writing. To him, writing was simply an extension of the magician’s work, that is to distract, to draw attention, to divert focus, and to play with the spectator’s / reader’s understanding of a given situation. Bradbury’s fascination with magic started in 1928 when he was only eight years old and it remained one of his biggest passions. Throughout his childhood, he devoted his free time to learning new conjuring tricks and spent time with magicians, such as Blackstone, Mr. Electrico and the Dill Brothers (Aggelis xiii-xiv). Bradbury explains that he is first and foremost a magician at heart, and that writing serves as a means to create his tricks:

I’m not a science fiction, fantasy, magic-realism writer of fairy tales and surrealist poems. Quicker Than the Eye may well be the best title I have ever conjured for a new collection. I pretend to do one thing, cause you to blink, and in the instant seize twenty bright silks out of a bottomless hat. (Quicker 257)

13Following the idea that Bradbury is not a writer per se, but rather a magician according to his own perception, his narrative techniques combine ellipses, silences, and a narrative scheme which precipitates the recurring deaths of the characters and sheds light only on the protagonists. In the same way that Bradbury writes of a “haste to live” according to the afterword’s title, or as a conjurer would say while showcasing sleight of hand tricks, “the quickness of the hand deceives the eye,” his narrative pace is a telling factor in his writing strategy. Every time a minor character falls into one of the protagonists’ traps, Bradbury introduces another scene which focuses solely on the married couple, without any clear transitions from one scene to the next. As a result, the events seem to be rushed, which is also accentuated by the author’s choice of the short story format instead of a novella or a novel. The narrative pace seems deliberately hurried as Bradbury does not include any descriptions of the murder of a guest whenever it occurs.

14The only clues the reader can rely on are given when Joshua and Missy briefly ask each other what has happened to one of their acquaintances (“Murders” 101, 104, 105, 106), or when the narrator summarizes in a single sentence how they disposed of the maid’s body, which they cut into pieces and placed in a suitcase in their attic (104). In addition, the fact that the maid’s murder is mentioned right in the middle of the short story in between two unrelated scenes—the following one being the cocktail party—shows the author’s desire to hide and display what he chooses in order to divert the readers’ attention so that they cannot fully process what is happening behind the scenes of the theatrical “dying game.” Like a magician, Bradbury seems to manipulate what the readers are to think, focus on, and understand from the situation. He uses ellipses and silences to seemingly precipitate the dénouement and chooses to highlight matters regarding the married couple and hide matters which concern the other characters in the story, perhaps almost as a dramatist would divide his play between on stage and off-stage scenes. This fast pace allows Bradbury to operate a strategy of masking and unmasking, but also of mirroring: he can control exactly what to echo when he focuses solely on the Enderbys’ relationship and moves. That is how, when using his tricks in the narration, Bradbury draws a parallel between the traditions of the circus or fairground—the hall of mirrors in this case. The mirroring visible in language is also reflected in the narrative structure, creating symmetrical patterns.

15Bradbury was heavily influenced by the world of the carnival, especially during the 1940s and the 1960s, and this is especially visible in his murder and detective stories. References to magicians or certain elements from circuses or attractions which could be found in fairgrounds are often included. Less directly, Bradbury alludes to the definition of the “carnivalesque,” a term coined by Mikhail Bakhtin which first appeared in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929) and was later developed in Rabelais and His World (1965). For Bakhtin, the carnivalesque encompasses four elements: “free and familiar interaction between people” (Problems 124), carnivalistic laughter which he describes as the “sparks of the carnival bonfire which renews the world” (Rabelais 17), crowning/decrowning which causes reversals that lead to “abrupt changes of fate” turning a “world upside down” (Problems 133, 158), and “antitheses and contrasts” (Problems 132). In other words, Bakhtin considers that the carnival brings together people from different backgrounds and with varied personalities to mingle in a space in which social hierarchies do not matter anymore, and in which individuals display uncommon or even grotesque behaviors. Unconventional and socially inappropriate conduct is thus encouraged by the carnival. Dualistic separations such as between life and death are revoked, and time and space become blurred. Carnival also leads to profanation, which is most of the time recognizable by its crude and blasphemous language, but which may also concern the characters’ bodies, subjected to metamorphoses or to a self-destructive lack of inhibition. In carnivalesque tales (which can, most of the time, also be considered as grotesque tales), “the reality of common life is distorted or destroyed when time, space, or self is abnormally affected” (Pierce 170).

16It is quite clear that Bradbury aligned “The Very Gentle Murders” with the conventions of the carnivalesque: the Enderbys spend a great amount of time with acquaintances in their house, utterly abandoning their initial concern with keeping up with appearances and social cues to devote themselves entirely to their “dying game,” a game which immerses them in eccentric behaviors. Inappropriate and blasphemous language pervades the duo’s discourse amidst the metamorphoses their bodies experience, going back and forth between old age and youth, stemming directly from their ability to transcend space and time, with old age coexisting with youth and death coexisting with life in the characters’ bodies. Alcohol consumption and bodily harm through murder attempts in “The Very Gentle Murders” seem to also derive directly from Bakhtin’s notion of “profanation.”

17As previously stated, there is a constant game of mirroring in this story which can reflect reality, but also distort it. It is found in Bradbury’s narrative pace and structure when he decides to precipitate or pass over events, and also in his use of a rather dark humor to manipulate the reader’s thoughts about the characters’ immoral game and divert their attention away from its side effects. The sense of humor which is featured in the short story resembles the carnivalesque and grotesque definition of laughter which mocks social correctness and deforms the human body, so that “laughter generated from carnival merry spirit enables the parody of sacred or political form and transforms carnival as a time of freedom from authoritative patterns and beliefs” (Andreutti 24). Regarding laughter at the deformation of the body, Juliana Claassens writes that “in carnivalistic literature, the dualistic image is often embodied by the formation of images in pairs, chosen for their contrast (high/low, fat/thin, life/death, top/bottom) or for their similarity… Once again, these images are not isolated but can rather be described as two bodies united to form one unfinished and open body (in Bakhtin’s terms the ‘grotesque body’)” (298). For instance, every time someone gets hurt—or worse, dies—Joshua and Missy act exactly the opposite way to what would be expected of anyone, that is stop the game and feel guilt. Joshua and Missy instead continue, brush off any guilt, and make fun of each other, their guests, and their maid Lila, saying harsh words about them and ridiculing them.

18Just after Missy tries to murder Joshua in his sleep in the first scene, Joshua simply turns over in bed, calls her a “good girl” (“Murders” 98), and then, in the next two lines, Missy just pours herself a glass of rum before the narrator quickly moves on to another scene set “at noon the next day” (98). When other characters fall into the traps, it is barely mentioned, and never addressed right away as opposed to the murderous attempts between Missy and Joshua. When Mr. Gowry falls down the stairs instead of Joshua whom Missy had asked to go fetch a bottle of brandy, the story only mentions that there was a “thunderous crash” (101) and that, according to Missy, “‘Mr. Gowry has pitched himself straight down the cellar stairs’” (101). Nothing further is said about this, until the next scene the next morning when Joshua asks how Gowry is doing, to which Missy simply replies, nonchalantly and very briefly, “Broken leg. Wished it had been his vocal cords” (101). In the next few lines, Joshua simply shrugs the matter off, stating “‘Good thing Gowry lurched for the brandy, not I’” (102). Once again, as is usual throughout the story, Missy drinks alcoholic and then finally adds “Shame” (102), definitively closing the discussion about Gowry’s fate. In this same daring mood, Missy responds to her maid’s fall down the stairs with “‘I send her everywhere now. She bucketed down like a laundry bag. Lucky she’s all fat’” (104), admitting that she is aware that her maid may die when she sends her to places in which Joshua may have set traps to kill her—this is confirmed when the reader finds out that the trap in the stairs was meant to kill Missy, not the maid.

19Drinking becomes one of the central elements punctuating the narration. Whenever a murder is explained, alcohol is involved during the discussion between the protagonists to understand what happened to the victims, or right after a failed attempt. Each murder following the Gowry episode is granted fewer and fewer explanatory lines and addressed after an increasingly longer delay following the incident. The identities of the last minor characters to die are barely remembered by Joshua and Missy at the end of the story. Drinking also serves as a tool to install comic relief into the narration as well as to attenuate reality when the protagonists make fun of their addiction and downplay its effects. A clear example of this is when, right after Joshua has nearly killed himself with the gun Missy tampered with, she says, defeated, “‘I suppose I’ll have to give you tea now. Come along’” (102). To which Joshua deadpans, “‘Tea, hell. Where’s the gin?!’” (102). The dark, harsh humor that fills the story also aims at playing down completely the collateral damage the protagonists cause and distorts the readers’ understanding of the situation, distracting them from seeing the horrendous consequences of the characters’ actions. This prevents readers from fully processing the implications of the “assassins’ game,” possibly leading them to laugh with Missy and Joshua. Humor is thus intended to be deceptive in the “Very Gentle Murders” as it blurs the boundaries between reality and appearances—or, to allude to the carnival tradition Bradbury was fond of, between masking and unmasking.

20Indeed, references to drinking and humor serve the whole mirroring system of the story: the Enderbys’ house resembles a hall of mirrors which constantly blinds and disfigures the characters both physically and mentally; it also makes them feel trapped in a situation they cannot escape. Not only do the characters become reflections of their past selves, they also lose themselves in their game, blind not only to their own fate, but also to some extent to the damage they cause. They seem trapped by their own doings and unable to stop their endeavors. The pattern of referring to drinking and of using a deprecating sense of humor does create links and mirroring between events and characters, but overall plays a larger role in combination with references to space and time management. Because each scene and murder takes place in a different room in the house, and because the narrative pace gets faster and faster as the story progresses, the characters seem to feel trapped inside their own maze full of mirroring imagery. In chronological order, the places mentioned are the bedroom (97), the garden pavilion (98), the “trot-down cellar” (101), then Missy sets out ant-paste pots in “all the rooms” (102), and Joshua sets rattraps in the halls (103), then what can be guessed as being the living room is mentioned (103), and all of a sudden, in the middle of the story, the pace gets faster in terms of narration as mentions of the hall stairs (104), the balcony (104), and the kitchen (104) appear on one single page, and later moves on to the greenhouse (105), and finally the story ends by the fire, Missy and Joshua sitting in the “library chairs” (109). This plurality of places not only makes the Enderbys’ mansion resemble a maze, but also one in which they feel stuck. Phonetically, Bradbury perhaps implies references to the maze as well when the narrator repeats the sounds “a maze,” writing “her hated husband’s amazed body” (98) and “don’t look at me in amaze, my dear” (99). The pair inevitably get lost in their funhouse.

The Sources of the Mirroring System

21It is not surprising that Ray Bradbury decided to make his story revolve around the aesthetics of mirrors. Indeed, the writer was no stranger to theories of the mind of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, not only from standard psychology and cognitive science, but also from the more controversial field of psychoanalysis. Bradbury’s fascination for the mechanisms of the human psyche have been thoroughly documented by his biographers William F. Touponce and Jonathan Eller. The writer himself was not reticent regarding his particular interest for psychology, as he would often speak about it to journalists. As he declared in an interview in March 1948, “writers must know human behavior. They should learn how to create a character which the reader will accept as recognizably human. The writer should study people, naturally, and a few books on psychology should be read” (“The Market” 9). A few years later, in 1962, Bradbury went as far as to declare that writers are “working in the same field as psychologists and psychiatrists” (“Sum and Substance” 7). It is thus impossible to present an accurate, plausible analysis of Bradbury’s short stories—or any of his other works—without investigating the psychology of the characters and the role played by psychology in his plots. This is particularly the case in Bradbury’s crime fiction stories which, most of the time, include protagonists suffering from paranoia, schizophrenia, various neuroses, or perversions. The issue here is to demonstrate the link between psychological and psychoanalytical theories of the mind and the “carnivalesque” and gothic traditions in Bradbury’s works.

22Bradbury considered Edgar Allan Poe to be his model and his main source of inspiration whatever he was writing. In “The Very Gentle Murders,” the theme of “mirroring” is reminiscent of Poe’s characterization, in which protagonists often face their alter egos (in “William Wilson,” for instance) or are conceived as doubles (as is the case in “Ligeia” or in “The Fall of The House of Usher”). In some of Poe’s stories as much as in Bradbury’s “The Very Gentle Murders,” the settings reflect the psyche of the protagonists. In Bradbury’s case, although “mirroring” effects occur throughout the story, both in the language and the narration, it appears that these are reflections of the protagonists’ psyches and their relationship with the “other” which they find in their partner. The Enderbys act as centripetal forces for the whole mirroring mechanism as they are both victims and also the source of the said mechanism. The married couple themselves are aware of this fact as Joshua claims that their situation is the obvious result of their own decisions (“Murders” 106), which have transformed their house into a maze-like hall of mirrors. According to him, his wife and himself are “‘two querulous old pots with nothing to do but kick off, and make a circus of that’” (99). Still, it would be wrong to say that they have full control over it, as they are both the creators and the victims of the machinery. As Jonathan Eller explains, it appears that the characters’ psyches mold the settings of the short story:

By the final decade of his life, the storyteller’s entire house had become an outward representation of his own subjective reality and loves. Like Poe, who was one of his great inspirations and internalized encouragers, he was fascinated with the architectures of the mind. In stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia” Poe created edifices that fully project the inner mind of the main character. Bradbury had the same tendencies, explored in such classic tales as “The Homecoming,” “Jack-in-the-Box,” and “Usher I.” (Beyond 375)

23Likewise in “The Very Gentle Murders,” as the characters’ minds invade and model their fictional surroundings. The settings become the representation of the Enderbys’ inner struggles, dissociating their own identity from their partner’s and coping with old age and death. For instance, a symbol which shows that the house is an integral part of the Enderbys is glass. The crash of the glass Joshua is holding as he learns about his fate announces the deaths not only of the characters, but also of the whole hall of mirrors-like structure which they created. Similarly, the fire burning in the hearth also symbolizes the deaths of the characters and of the whole edifice as the “firelight glimmering on their ghost-pale faces” (“Murders” 107) disappears as the fire “burned to ashes” when Missy’s “breath ceased” (109). Not only is the fire reflected on their faces as they look at it, but it also symbolically parallels their quest for death, burning more than ever as the characters’ hope that their murder attempts will succeed increases, and then, when the characters die, the fire suddenly goes out too. It is not surprising to find a running metaphor of mirrors in many aspects of the story because, as Bradbury himself declared, “I speak in tongues. I write metaphors. Every one of my stories is a metaphor you can remember” (Listen 204). It can then be said that the Enderbys are the embodiment of mirroring as the house and everything which occurs in its space can be directly linked to the protagonists’ psychological pattern.

24The descriptions of Joshua and Missy throughout the short story portray each member of the duo as their partner’s double, or doppelgänger. Very often, the doppelgänger serves the purpose of troubling the main characters who are led to see themselves in another individual because of their striking similarities in terms of personality and physical traits. Indeed, as Sigmund Freud asserts, a doppelgänger frequently appears because “a person may identify himself with another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the other’s self for his own” (141-42). The character facing his/her doppelgänger often feels disturbed by the double’s existence, which often leads him/her to doubt his/her own identity or sanity. The doppelgänger, often found in the gothic tradition, usually demonstrates an ambiguity regarding the legitimacy of the character’s existence, both when the double is real and when they are the product of the character’s imagination, as they project the perception of their own self onto the person in whom they see their reflection. For the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the identification of an individual with a doppelgänger may be linked for some to the individual’s incapacity to define their own sense of self and identity, derived from the individual’s abnormally developed self-perception during early childhood. As he explains, the mirror “immediately gives rise in a child to a series of gestures in which he playfully experiences the relationship between the movements made in the image and the reflected environment, and between this virtual complex and the reality it duplicates—namely, the child’s own body, and the persons and even things around him” (75). Lacan names this phenomenon the “mirror stage” in his essay “The Mirror Stage as a Function of the I,” which refers to the symbolic stage in which children acquire an identity and separate their own selves from the individuals in their environment. It refers to the moment when the child who is placed in front of a mirror recognizes themselves as an individual with their own separate identity.

25Yet when the mirror stage does not proceed as expected, the individual may be permanently incapable of clearly defining who they are, even as an adult. As a result, the individual will be much more likely to identify themselves with one of their peers, and consequently feel some difficulty in differentiating themselves from the other person. As Lacan suggests about the mirror stage, “it will also be the rootstock of secondary identifications, this latter term subsuming the libidinal normalization functions” (76). According to Lacan, the mirror stage thus prefigures the manner in which people recognize and create their own identity through the images they recognize of other people (‘imago’). The psychoanalyst suggests that our identities are structured by our understanding of the image—or reflection—of other people, but also by the realization of the differences between ourselves and others. For him, human identity is neither fixed nor consistent. Instead, it is an assemblage of images and understandings of the self which constantly changes. As he writes, “the function of the mirror stage thus turns out, in my view, to be a particular case of the function of imagos, which is to establish a relationship between an organism and its reality—or, as they say, between the Innenwelt and the Umwelt” (78). Lacan borrows the German word “innenwelt” to describe the inner world of the individual, opposing it to the “umwelt,” which means “environment,” “surroundings.” This contrast emphasizes the interaction between the imaginary interior space that the “I” occupies, and the physical world in which the individual is situated. This can be a plausible explanation for Bradbury’s choice to merge mirroring with a regressive metamorphosis of the couple into their child selves. Following Lacan’s reasoning, “this intertwining between the child’s image—together his and the one he receives from the mirror—and his proper name constitutes a symbolic identification” (Thibierge and Morin 65).

26The two characters in “The Very Gentle Murders” mirror each other in their similar patterns of behavior and their personalities. They appear extremely similar in their ways of thinking, plotting, and in the overall common goal they want to achieve, which is to get rid of each other. They can read each other’s minds and often predict what the other has planned. As the narrator explains, about Joshua, “Reading her mind, he stared at his own drink” (“Murders” 100). Interestingly, Bradbury seems to insinuate that the characters are so similar that they are reflections of each other, as if they were constantly looking at themselves in a mirror when they look at each other. While Missy scrutinizes Joshua through the crystal vase to try to read his mind, Joshua looks at his glass to try and figure out what she is thinking. Both characters have the same kind of humor and are animated by the same desire which makes them seek life by provoking death. Although the Enderbys affirm they are only pretending to be close and in love for the sake of keeping up appearances in front of their guests, it is hard to believe this is simply “acting” as they seem rather close when they laugh together. Similarly, Joshua and Missy share the same addiction, namely drink, and have the same reaction to it, which is to ignore its consequences. They always drink before or after a murder attempt. The greatest irony in the story is that although they succeed in surviving, unharmed, most of their partner’s deadly traps, they die not only symbolically from their addiction to alcohol, but more broadly fail to avoid the one murder method they said they would never die from, nor use. This is the paradox which ultimately catches them as they fail to see the plain reflection of their fate that has been shown to them all along, but also fail to read each other on this one occasion. Nonetheless, even if they fail to anticipate this possibility which was before their eyes all this time—and do not die from the trickier traps—they still die at the same time from having the same idea.

27Mirroring is significant in the downfall of the two characters and is also the result of the confusion they feel about their own identities. As the story progresses, the characters struggle more and more to decipher exactly who they are and to define who the other is. Bradbury very clearly shows the growing confusion in the minds of the characters as they struggle to define their own pronouns. Throughout, pronouns are italicized, contrasting “her” and “him,” and most importantly, as the story progresses, the confusion between “I,” “me,” “you,” and “your” and “my” intensifies, culminating in a scene which allows the reader to witness the two characters’ inability to differentiate themselves from the other. Right before the last scene, Joshua seems to be conscious of the situation they have reached, saying “‘Just you, me and—ah—the chandelier?’” (106), the chandelier being the “Fontainebleau Palace crystal hangings” (104) the characters obsess over. Missy wants to leave it intact and preserve it, while Joshua wishes to unscrew it for Missy to die crushed under it. A few lines before his death, Joshua finally voices “‘both of us’” (108), perhaps admitting that they really are alike. The shared death of the two protagonists thus recalls the Gothic theme of the “double,” the protagonists seeing in each other the reflection of themselves, symbolically dying together at the same time as they cannot be separated.

28By affiliating the carnivalesque tradition and the notion of the doppelgänger along with Lacan’s “mirror stage,” Bradbury creates a story based on paradoxes, embodied in the aesthetics of the mirrors. The symbolism of mirroring defines the whole structure of the short story as the duality and the struggles of the Enderbys pervade the narration. The fact that both spouses are fighting mortality by regressing in age, but yet are both the bearers of death, coincides with the carnivalesque collapse of traditional dualities. As such, the mirroring system which depicts reality also distorts it as a result of the protagonists’ paradoxical behaviors. In the same way that there is some dissonance between appearances and reality in the situation—not only for the reader, but also for the characters—there is also, more deeply ingrained, a dissonance in the relationship the Enderbys enjoy. Missy and Joshua supposedly despise each other, calling each other names such as “ancient whore of Babylon” (98) or “you old S.O.B.” (104), among a plethora of other insults. They do not hesitate to bring up their hatred for each other, as when Joshua whispers to Missy “‘I dislike you with something approaching the colossal proportions of first love’” (100-01), or when Missy tells him “‘I’ve never liked you. Loved you, yes, but that’s ten million years back. You never were a friend’” (99). Yet, the characters, although they express their disdain for each other and their desire to kill one another, behave ambiguously when they also show benevolence.

29Whenever they talk about murdering each other, they are said to be laughing, feeling like children and teenagers again, and joyously discussing traps they could employ to kill the other one. They install clear boundaries they are not to cross and want to protect each other from troubles they could get into with the police. As Joshua declares, “‘If I do you in, or if you do me in… Let’s protect each other… If I die, you should be shielded so no one’ll accuse you. Same with me, if you die’” (98-99). On the same note, each Enderby shows sympathy for their partner when they decide to save them from a painful death, refusing to use poisons such as the “Black Leaf Forty” and the “‘recipe that will break you out in a thousand lumps before expiring’” (103). The most obvious paradox the duo displays is that it is when they seek death, that they feel the most alive. The life and death instincts in the couple’s marriage are codependent and impossible to dissociate. When they are not playing their killer game, they feel tired and gloomy, yet whenever they try to kill each other and embark on discussions about death, they feel rejuvenated, and their descriptions completely morph from one extreme to the other. It could be said, following Lacan’s theory, that the reason why the Enderbys want to kill each other is because they project onto each other their own selves, and see in their doppelgänger the traits they dislike about themselves, especially the deterioration of their cognitive abilities and physical appearances, and their self-harming habits. Their drive for murder can then perhaps be understood as an act of suicide, which is fueled by their regression into childhood that symbolizes the origin of their identity struggles. The characters also display very paradoxical feelings for their friends whom they seem to appreciate but also dislike at the same time. While, at the beginning, they do care about their friends’ opinion of them, at the end this does not matter anymore. The paradoxes which fill the short story are thus the result of the duality of the two doppelgängers and their inner struggles.

30It cannot be said that “The Very Gentle Murders” is a strictly realistic short story. While the resolution of the story is straightforward and although the murders are all explained, the short story cannot be considered as plain because there seems to be another dimension which is deeply embedded in it, and which combines a structure of mirrors and the influence of the Gothic and of carnival traditions. That is, the structure revolving around mirrors offers a plethora of noticeable echoes and reflections which appear in the narrative structure and techniques, and in the language. The constant contrasts and paradoxes in “The Very Gentle Murders” form an architecture which looks like a hall of mirrors, and which operates on two levels, between “normal” mirrors that reflect reality, and distorting mirrors that falsify it, both physically and metaphorically. Ultimately, the projection of the protagonists’ psyche onto the outer world is the exact reason for the mirroring system, the characters being the central forces behind it. The system thus relies on the minds and on the mirroring inside their marriage, and it is the struggle in identifying themselves and the other which leads them to their downfall. In the story, elements coexist with their opposites because the characters themselves are full of paradoxes. The maze they are stuck in seems to be the result of the projection of their own psyches, modeled by their paradoxes, and which they lose themselves in both mentally and physically speaking. Their struggle to escape the maze-like structure they have created seems to be the reflection of their mental struggle to deal with their paradoxical and ambiguous thoughts and endeavors.