Synopsis: The Dragon is a short story by Ray Bradbury, published in August 1955 in Esquire magazine. The story follows two medieval knights who, in the middle of a desolate wasteland shrouded in darkness, await the arrival of a fearsome dragon that devours solitary travelers. As the night progresses, one of them feels that time in that place is strange, as if the world were trapped in an eternal cycle. With their spears at the ready and fear in their hearts, the warriors prepare to face the creature, unaware of the truth that awaits them.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The Dragon by Ray Bradbury
In the vast and desolate plain, two men take shelter by a small fire. They are knights from an unknown era, wrapped in the darkness of the night, gripped by cold and fear. They have set out on a desperate mission: to hunt down the dragon terrorizing the region, a mythical creature with fiery eyes and breath of fire whose presence sows terror and death among solitary travelers. One of the men hesitantly expresses his desire to return to the castle, as the dragon never ventures into the city. However, his companion insists they must face it, as it has devoured many men who have tried to cross the moor.
The wind blows across the plain like a dire omen, and the second knight, overcome by a strange feeling of unreality, confesses that he feels that time does not pass generally in that place. It is as if they were trapped in a limbo where the past and the future blur, history dissolves, and existence becomes uncertain. He cannot explain why, but he senses that the moor does not belong to any known time, as if the world itself were different beyond its horizon.
Suddenly, the silence is broken. In the distance, a shuddering roar rends the night. The dragon approaches. The knights hastily put on their armor and mounted their horses. The monster advances, its infernal radiance illuminating the hill, its substantial dark body gliding with a deafening roar. The men take up a position in a small valley, ready to charge with their spears at the colossus approaching at terrifying speed. One of them shouts a prayer, and, in a fatal instant, the beast is upon them.
The clash is brutal. One of the spears hits the creature’s incandescent eye, but the onslaught is unstoppable. The first knight is thrown into the air, and as he falls, he is dragged and crushed under the dragon’s onslaught. The second man and his horse are violently thrown against a rock while the roar of the beast, shrouded in fire and smoke, echoes across the plain.
And then the scene changes. Suddenly, another voice breaks into the darkness, a different, modern voice. Two men are talking inside a steam locomotive racing through the wasteland. One insists that they have run over something, a knight in armor. His companion, however, is skeptical; they stopped the train on another occasion and never found anything. They prefer to move on, as the wasteland provokes an unsettling, almost supernatural feeling. The train whistles again, moving on without stopping, leaving behind a trail of smoke and steam dissipating in the freezing air.
And so the story is revealed: the medieval knights and their dragon were nothing more than an echo trapped in time, ghosts of a past that lingers in the folds of the world. The monstrous fire beast was nothing more than the locomotive on its night journey, a specter of iron and steam that plowed through the plains, crossing eras and becoming a mythological creature in the minds of those men of the past.
Analysis of The Dragon by Ray Bradbury
Character analysis:
The two knights are the protagonists. They are warriors from an indeterminate era, immersed in a mission that seems absurd and doomed to failure: to hunt a dragon whose existence is more a terrifying legend than a tangible certainty. One is the more resolute, who insists on continuing the mission and believes he must face the beast despite his companion’s doubts. He represents determination and the desire to fulfill a purpose, even if it may be incomprehensible or impossible. The other knight, on the other hand, is more fearful and reflective. He questions the nature of the world they find themselves in and feels that time has stood still in that wasteland as if everything were an illusion or a place outside of history. It embodies the anguish of the unknown, the feeling of being trapped in a destiny imposed by forces they do not understand.
The dragon, which initially seems to be a mythical creature, represents a key point in the story. For the knights, it is a being of fire and destruction, a monster that devours travelers and terrorizes the region. However, the great revelation of the story is that this dragon is nothing more than a steam locomotive crossing the moor at night, an image that, in the minds of the medieval warriors, is transformed into a hellish being due to their lack of understanding of the modern world. In this sense, the dragon is a manifestation of the clash between two eras, the materialization of the human incapacity to understand that which is beyond their own time.
Finally, the train drivers represent the modern and objective perspective of history. They are characters who appear at the end of the story, chatting casually about what has just happened. One mentions that they have hit something on the track and describes it as a knight in armor, but his colleague is skeptical and prefers not to stop and investigate. For them, what happened is nothing more than a minor incident, a disturbing moment they choose to leave behind. Their presence in the story reinforces the idea that time is an uncontrollable flow and that, sometimes, the boundaries between past and present can blur unexpectedly.
Setting in which the story takes place:
The setting of The Dragon is a vast and desolate wasteland, a place where time seems to have stopped and reality takes on an uncertain hue. The plain stretches out under an unmoving and empty sky, with no sign of life except for the two knights waiting by a small fire. Bradbury’s description emphasizes the feeling of isolation and timelessness. There are no birds in the sky, the stones have long since stopped moving, and the only sign of existence is the presence of the protagonists. This bleak and silent landscape accentuates the idea that the characters are trapped in a space where the rules of time and history seem to differ from those of the everyday world.
The atmosphere is oppressive and almost unreal. Night dominates the scene, with gusts of wind bringing with them echoes of a remote past or an incomprehensible future. How the knights perceive their surroundings suggests they are in a liminal place, a frontier between the known and the unknown, where logic blurs and certainties become doubtful. This wasteland, as well as being physical, is also symbolic: it represents the fear of the inexplicable, the clash between mythology and reality, between the past and the future.
Beyond the space where the knights find themselves, the scene transforms when the “dragon” appears. What previously seemed like a medieval world is suddenly disrupted by the eruption of a force that tears through the night with fire and thunder. The inhospitable terrain becomes the point of collision between two different times: that of the warriors, who believe they are facing a monster, and that of the train that advances relentlessly through the landscape. The wasteland is not only the setting for the story but also the vehicle that allows this impossible encounter. Temporal boundaries are diluted in this territory and the mythical and modern merge.
When the story changes perspective, and we find ourselves inside the locomotive, the scene is revealed in a different light. What for the knights was a realm of nightmares, populated by fire-breathing dragons, for the machinists, is simply an expanse of cold, dark land, crossed by the machine on its nocturnal journey. The plain remains the same, but its meaning varies depending on who observes it. For some, it is a place of death and tragic destiny; for others, it is just another route on the map. This ambiguity is key to the story, as it underlines how human perception shapes reality and how each era interprets the world in its way.
Type of narrator and how it influences the development of the story:
The narrator of The Dragon is an omniscient third-person narrator, with a perspective that alternates between the subjective and the objective to play with the reader’s perception. From the story’s beginning, the narrator immerses us in the minds of the two knights, describing their thoughts, emotions, and fears in an introspective tone that emphasizes the feeling of unreality in which they are trapped. This approach allows us to experience the story from their point of view, sharing their doubts about time and their belief in the dragon’s existence as a mythical and terrifying creature.
The narration is developed with a language full of lyricism and symbolism, conveying the characters’ uncertainty and the strangeness of the setting. Through detailed and evocative descriptions, the narrator creates an atmosphere of mystery in which the plain seems to exist outside of time, and the dragon’s danger is felt imminent and actual. However, this perspective is deceptive, as the reader only has the vision of the knights, who interpret the world from their own superstitious and medieval experiences.
The most significant change in the narrative occurs at the climax of the story when the narrator abandons the perspective of the knights and places us in a completely different context: that of the train drivers. Here, the narrator’s voice becomes more objective and realistic, revealing that the dragon is nothing more than a steam locomotive advancing across the plain. The way the story transforms at this point demonstrates the mastery of the narrator, who has guided the reader through an illusion and then dismantled it with an abrupt and surprising revelation.
This omniscient narrator is essential to the story’s effect, as it allows the duality between myth and reality to be played with. First, it makes us experience the fear of the knights and their perception of the dragon as a monstrous entity, and then it shows us the modern perspective of the train drivers, who view the same event with indifference and skepticism. This manipulation of the narrative reinforces the story’s central idea: that reality depends on the observer’s context and perception. Thus, the narrator not only relates the facts but also constructs the deception and the final revelation, leaving the reader with a reflection on the nature of time and how each era interprets the world in its way.
Conclusions and general commentary on Ray Bradbury’s The Dragon
Ray Bradbury is known for his ability to fuse science fiction with philosophical reflection and the symbolic. In The Dragon, he takes a medieval setting and turns it into a space of collision between two worlds: fantasy and modernity. The story, although brief, is rich in meaning and plays with the reader’s perception to construct a surprising ending.
The story takes place on a dark and desolate plain where two knights await the arrival of a dragon. Their conversation is full of anguish, fear, and resignation in the face of a creature they describe with apocalyptic attributes: eyes of fire, poisonous breath, and a fury capable of reducing towers to dust. The way they refer to it suggests a mythological being, a beast from chivalric tales. However, in the end, it is revealed that what they perceive as a monster is nothing more than a moving train, an apparatus of modernity that is incomprehensible to them.
The final twist is the most shocking element of the story. Bradbury questions how humans interpret the unknown through the prism of their beliefs and knowledge. The knights see the train as a dragon because they cannot conceive of the technology of the future, which creates a tension between mythology and reality.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the story is its play with time. Throughout the conversation of the knights, one of them mentions that time seems to stand still on that plain, that everything is “forever.” This detail, which might seem like a simple poetic observation, becomes a key clue to the outcome: their reality and the train drivers coexist on different time planes. Bradbury does not give us a concrete explanation as to whether the knights belong to the past and have been “obliterated” by the future or whether their world is just an image trapped in time, like an echo of another era that vanishes in contact with modernity.
The dragon is the story’s center, and its interpretation changes according to perspective. For the knights, it represents chaos, death, and destruction. It is another night train journey for the train driver and his companion. This difference in perception is crucial to the story’s message: the unknown can seem monstrous when you don’t have the context to understand it.
Through this metaphor, Bradbury speaks of the clash between imagination and reality, between the past and the future. It reflects how the advance of technology can be viewed with fear and amazement by those who do not understand it. On a deeper level, the story can also be interpreted as a representation of the end of an era where the magic of myths and fantasy fades before the coldness of modernity.
The language of the story is highly evocative. From the first line, Bradbury introduces us to a dark, desolate atmosphere where “the night blew across the short grass of the wasteland.” His descriptions convey a sense of unease and mystery. Throughout the story, he plays with the images of fog, fire, and shadows to reinforce the characters’ uncertainty and the reader’s tension.
Furthermore, the knights’ dialogue is crucial in setting the tone. Their phrases are full of despair, of resignation in the face of a destiny they consider inevitable. This emotional construction means that when the denouement arrives, the impact is more powerful: what they perceived as a heroic struggle against a mythological creature was nothing more than an accidental encounter with progress.
