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| The short story There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury was influential to the composition of the works There Will Come Soft Rains and Soft Rains. Below you will find a paper on this short story written by Zachar Laskewicz in 1988. This demonstrates the strong relationship between Laskewicz's work and extra-musical factors such as literature. Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" From The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury is famous for his novels, short stories, poems and his individual writing style which sets him on a level higher than pulp science fiction authors. It is known as "poetic" science fiction, his wroks ranging from the fantastic to the macarbe. The most well known of his books is a novel, Fahrenheit 451. His use of poetic science fiction draws you to his work. In many, the images created ar so awesome that they have you gasping for breath, often merely dure to the story's amazing simplicity. I consider many of his short stories to be masterpieces of literature, as if, like an artist he spends ages working on and perfecting his creations. The short story we will be discussing is one of these. Bradbury in his time has addressed many relevant themes and ideas. Some of his major preoccupations are writing about politics, religion, marriage and children. He has portrayed children as both the enemies and the heroes. Two of his novels are about children and what they observe as they grow up: Something Wicked This Way Comes, a chilling fantasy, and Dandelion Wine, about a boy who one Summer realises he is really alive. His short stories "The Veldt" and "The Enemy Within" both portray children as the evil enemy. "The Veldt" is set in a hose like the one in "There Will Come Soft Rains". He also makes a subtle poke at marriage in his range of stories connected with a company called "Marionette's Inc." which produces robots to take the place of people when they grow sick of the life they are living. Most of all, Bradbury likes to deal with a future where humanity has lost its hold on the earth in some way, techology has gone too far or there has been some kind of catastrophe. He prophesis a horrific future where imagination has been eradicated and man becomes like the machine, even worse than the future prophesized in Orwell's 1984. In his novel Fahrenheit 451, this theme predominates, involving firemen whose role in life is to burn books (451 F is the "temperature at which books catch fire and burn"). Also in his nightmarish short story "The Pedestrian" a similar theme is discussed, man has become the servant of his creations. In most, however, the human soul stands and fights, and often overcomes its awesome foe, showing the optimism Bradbury has for the human spirit. In his short story "There Will Come Soft Rains" we are not so lucky. It is taken from his movel (really a collection of short stories) called retitled The Martian Chronicles. Following his fovourite theme, it concerns the end of humanity brought about of course by our own ignorance - ATOMIC WAR. He deals wit h this theme in his own imaginitvely 'poetic' style, and has brought forth a work of art that puts him on the top of the science fiction writers heap, and among the great writers of all time. The story was written over 40 years ago (1940-41) and must nob be considered quite unique for its time. People never used his revolutionary frm of structure, and the subject matter also broke new ground, considering the pro-nuclear propoganda that was around at the time of writing. Of course, then he was considered to be just another pulp science fiction writer, so little of his work hwas taken seriously, if not totally ignored. "The house stood alone on a street where all the other houses were rubble and ashes." Basically, "There Will Come Soft Rains", as well as atomic warfare, concerns the technological revolutin and its effect on our society, how it isolates us from one another. It is abut the last day in the "life" of a wonderful electronic home - after an atomic war. It is the only house left standing on its desolate, ruined street and is still running to capacity even though its inhabitants remain only as shadows embedded on its walls. The style of narration of the story is important. The author uses no specific tone, just a simpe fairy tale like narrative. The striking contrst of the first two paragraphis is important in settin gup the atmosphere of the story. "The house was a good house, it fed, slept and intertained its inhabitatnts." They were happy and content. Overtones of a softened life are suggested, from living with "beds that made themselves"etc. The house seems to be the master and tits inhabitants its willing slaves. But we soon realise the insignificance of it all when the "happy time" ends and humanity is destroyed. "and then one day the world shook and there was an explosion followed by ten thousand explosions and red fire in the sky and a rain of ashes and radioactivity, and the happy time was over." Then in another contrast, the electronic day in the life of the electronic hose begins. The importance of the strict structure makes itself apparent, further exaggerating the lack of humanity in the story - its impersonality. Time passes for characters that don't even exist. The voice clock is very important in announcing the part of the day we have reached "seven nin, breakfast time" or "eight one, run, run, off to school, off to work, run, run, ticktick, eight one o'clock!" "In the living room the voice clock sang, 'tick-tock, seven A.M. o'clock, time to get up!' as if it were afraid anyone would. The house lay empty. The clock taked on onto the empty mornin." In the strict narrative he also uses 'personification'- giving the house human traits, making you feel sorry for its pathetic needless existence. This 'humanity ' forces us to remember that there are no humans in the house, increasing the macarbe atmosphere. "In the living room the voice clock sang" "The kitchen stove sighed" At ten fifteen (story time) we are reminded of the conted family that lived in the house. In tyical Bradbury style, they remain only as shadows of paint, silhouettes of people that once were but now are gone forever. The image created is an important symbol in the story. We see a happy family, children playing ball, mother picking flowers and father mowing the lawn. The house kept them hapy and contented "even when the world trembled." "The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the body, the birl, the ball - remained. These rest was a thin layer of charcoal." "And inside the house was like an altar." This is an important passage. The house is like a sacred ground, meticulously cleaned and cared for, ever waiting for the arrival of its gods, "even though the gods have gone away and the ritual is meaningless." The poor dog is recognised as one of the houses former inhabitants and is let in the front door, dirtying the religiously clean hall. Covered in sores and and "skin to the bone", it smells the house cooking pancakes which will be thrown away, froths in hunger and frustration and dies. Later, the robot mice clean away th already slightly decaying dog to the incinerator which "sat like an evil Baal in the corner." The dog has broken into the house's sacred territory and dies for its pains. "There will come soft rains and the smell of the goround, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound; The poem chosen by the house relates to the title of the short story, "There Will Come Soft Rains", and is an important part of the story. It is ironic, about how umanity, after the war, will be forgotten in an instant and never missed. It is showing how insignificant our achievements on earth are - technology, weapons and the importance of "earth" - birds, nature, spring etc. Humanity is but a minor stain on the infinte earth, one that made an destroyed itself in a second. "Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree! if mankind perished utterly And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone. Ironically enough, nature itself ends up destroying the house. "The wind blew. The ouh of a fallin g tree smashed the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, crashed on the stove." The battle between nature and the lat remnant of humanity is feirce, and the electronic house dies like a human. "'Fire!' screamed voices. 'Fire!' water pumps shot down water from the ceilings." "The house was shuddering, oak bone on bone, the bared skelton cringing from the heat, all the wires revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins quiver in the scalded air." "Windows snapped open like mouths, undecided', and finally, after a chaotic death rattle, the house collapses onto itself "the attic smashing kitchen down into cellar and subvellar." "Smoke and silence." "Dawn shone faintly in the East." The sun rises, it is morning and the earth is cleansed. Nature has finally won, destroying perhaps evry 'living' trace of humanity, the last human effigy. "There will come soft rains" at last. But nature in its imperfection hasn't totally destroyed the house. One wall stands alone in the ruins. "Within the wall, a voice said, over and over and again an again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: 'Today is april 29th, 1985. Today is April 29th, 1985. Today is...' " |
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