Family

Family is an important theme in the short story collection “A Medicine for Melancholy” by Ray Bradbury. Family involves mutual love, compassion, loyalty towards, and emotional, spiritual, and physical support of individuals who may or may not be blood-related, but who still behave in the fashion of the traditional family unit. Family can be found consistently throughout Bradbury’s collection, and family affects the plot of the stories in various ways – sometimes positive, sometimes negative.

In the story “In a Season of Calm Weather”, George and Alice Smith, husband and wife, take a vacation together to the French coast where Alice worries her husband’s time may be ruined by longing after meeting or buying a piece of artwork from Picasso. In “A Medicine for Melancholy”, Camillia’s family will do whatever they must to diagnose the illness that afflicts their only daughter. This includes soliciting...