Ray Bradbury- There Will Come Soft Rains
Ray Bradbury- “ There Will Come Soft Rains” ---Science Fiction Literature Focusing on: Themes of the story: End of the world; Apocalyptic events. Despair and Destruction of mankind and his creations. Also, Natures way of always taking its course, no matter what the circumstance. Bradbury seems to be focusing on revering man's great accomplishments, but expressing sadness over our capability to destroy ourselves. It showed our vast works outliving us, but at the same time, still trying to serve us, but without our spark, our creativity and our presence to maintain it, it essentially perishes, and quite literally collapses.
“ The morning house lay empty” (456). There has been some sort of mass
destruction, end of the world perhaps. Everyone seems to either have
disappeared or died, possibly even disintegrated, as the story implies, “Here a
silhouette of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman
planting flowers. Still farther over there, their images burned on wood in one
titanic instant (as if to say, incinerated), a small boy hands flung into the
air;…” (458).
It seems all that remains is one house in the entire city, maybe even the world. Although the family that once resided and flourished in this home is gone, the house (which is automated) carries on as though nothing has changed. Carrying on daily tasks as if there is still life in this home, voicing alarms, wake up calls, and alerts, “Tick-Tock, seven o’ clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’ clock (456)!”
As evening comes, coincidentally the house automatically reads the woman's favorite poem, "There Will Come Soft Rains" (460), also the title of
Bradbury’s short story. The poem describes how, once man is utterly destroyed because of a war, nature will go on without man, as if nothing had happened. Toward the end of the story, as the poem in the story predicts, nature takes its course. A fire
“ The morning house lay empty” (456). There has been some sort of mass
destruction, end of the world perhaps. Everyone seems to either have
disappeared or died, possibly even disintegrated, as the story implies, “Here a
silhouette of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman
planting flowers. Still farther over there, their images burned on wood in one
titanic instant (as if to say, incinerated), a small boy hands flung into the
air;…” (458).
It seems all that remains is one house in the entire city, maybe even the world. Although the family that once resided and flourished in this home is gone, the house (which is automated) carries on as though nothing has changed. Carrying on daily tasks as if there is still life in this home, voicing alarms, wake up calls, and alerts, “Tick-Tock, seven o’ clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’ clock (456)!”
As evening comes, coincidentally the house automatically reads the woman's favorite poem, "There Will Come Soft Rains" (460), also the title of
Bradbury’s short story. The poem describes how, once man is utterly destroyed because of a war, nature will go on without man, as if nothing had happened. Toward the end of the story, as the poem in the story predicts, nature takes its course. A fire