There Will Come Soft Rains Essay

555 Words3 Pages
In the short story There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury, the author ultimately wants to warn humanity that it is in danger of destroying itself. He creates a humanlike house which stands as a symbol for man’s technological achievement, but destroys it with the one force that will never be conquered – nature. In order to convey this warning to his readers, Bradbury uses hyperbolic diction to create a tone shift from one of placid efficiency to a tone of doomed desperation. Bradbury creates a tone of routine efficiency by personifying the house to illustrate that - like any faithful human servant – it lives to serve. The house wakes up its occupants much like a cheerful but insistent human nanny by singing, “Tick-tock, seven o’clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’clock” (Bradbury 1). It further continues to meet the needs of its humans by acting like a human: preparing breakfast, reminding them of appointments and preparing them for the rain outside (Bradbury 1). Later, one can almost visualize a uniformed human chauffer opening the car door for his employer. When it anticipates a departure, the house, “…lifted its [garage] door to reveal the waiting car” (Bradbury 1). This personification creates a clear link between human achievement (a technologically wondrous house that replaces human servants) and humanity. Bradbury uses the ‘human’ house as a metaphor for humanity. The tone of cheerful efficiency – despite the fact that there are no humans on the receiving end – conveys to the reader the false idea that even without human involvement, human achievement will go on and on. However, because Bradbury wants to send us a clear warning about this illusion, the tone shifts. Using hyperbolic, violent verbs to describe the house’s destruction creates the doomed tone that is so effective in delivering Bradbury’s warning
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