Stephen Vincent Benet’s “By the Waters of Babylon” is a story where a boy named John takes all of us on the adventure to make new discoveries and finds his way to gain wisdom and become a man. Ray Bradburry’s story, “There Will Come Soft Rain” gives ideas about the life on a futuristic smart house after an apocalyptic massacre to end all life on Earth. Bothe of these stories are both very alike and different, but they both tell us that without intelligent decisions made by mankind, the future for the earth will not be safe nor a habitable place for humans to exist together anymore.
Mankind’s role in the future of the earth will be thrown back to their primitive state or become nonexistent all in one. In There Will Come Soft Rain, man is nonexistent
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and technology is the only thing left to show traces of mankind. There are no humans to keep the Earth running so every living thing will die out without the support of humans and technology will do what it was programmed to do for the rest of eternity unless there is an outside force that will tamper with it or destroy it.
The house in this story is a smart home that helps with daily activities but without mankind it does not know what to do or act. The house tried to keep everything clean for the arrival of the humans again and the house would get scared at the littlest things without the protection of men. “It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch this house” (P. 472). In the quote the house didn’t like that there was something tampering with the house that wasn’t supposed to be there, so the house made the bird leave to keep it in the right condition for the humans like it was told to. In By the Waters of Babylon, mankind exists but they are thrown back a lot of stages. Man have moved back and they are told what to do and what not to do by their appointed leader who was a priest. John, the son and heir of the priest is taught the ways of ruling and how exactly to rule an entire colony. From …show more content…
birth this colony was told that is was forbidden to cross the river to the East because then they would be trespassing into the land of the gods. John finally said that he needed to find out what was beyond the forbidden border. So he went and was shocked to realize the land on the gods was only an old city that had been bombed. He wondered how long ago the bomb was dropped because when he went into a building he said “Everywhere there were books and writings, many in tongue that I could not read” (P. 464). He realizes that they know significantly less than the inhabitants before them. In the two stories there is a similarity that is clear to all people who read it.
This is that mankind will eventually try and ruin the world. In There Will Come Soft Rain the entire Earth has gone through a world war three and it has all been evaporated by nuclear explosions. Where all that is left are buildings and small traces of human life. “Here, the silhouette in paint of a man mowing the lawn” (P. 472). This small trace was left when a man was outside doing yardwork and then the bomb was dropped and the only thing left to show his existence is the figure on the house that was behind him when the bomb went off. The same dark idea applies to By the Water of Babylon because when John crosses the river he realizes that the land of the gods isn’t very god like, he sees that it is all in rubble and ashes. “When gods war with gods they use weapons we do not know” (P. 466). Johns thought was that the gods of the land got into a war and fought to the death and destroyed the city with them, but the town that he thought was the gods was a popular city before his time called New York that was bombed by mankind in acts of
war. The main message for these two stories is that advancements in technology is responsible for pushing the Earth back a couple of stages. While John in By the Waters of Babylon thinks everything he is doing is normal, he has no idea what life was like before his time. He didn’t know of the technology and the advancements that humans have made before him. Sadly, the advancements were too much and it got too powerful and it destroyed the earth knocking all civilizations back hundreds of years. The people who are in the civilizations didn’t know how to act and how to respond and they became less smart to where it was forbidden to touch a piece of metal unless you were in the highest rank and blessed it. The colony found out what happened and realized there was life before them and they knew they had to do something about it. “There were men who were here before us. We must build again. (P. 467). There Will Come Soft Rain is a better example of how technology can ruin the world with too much power. In this story everybody on earth dies because of the extreme war and there is nothing left. The war has ended all human life. “And not one will know of the war, not one will care when it’s done” (P. 474). This tells us that it won’t matter when everybody is dead because they won’t be alive anymore to care, they will all be gone. “The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes” (P. 474). Where the only thing left in the Earth is a few houses that will deteriorate over time and the Earth will claim its land back and grow again leaving man extinct all because of the advancements of technology. In conclusion, both There Will Come Soft Rain and By the Waters of Babylon have comparisons that make them very similar and teach lessons in life, they tell us that the future of the Earth will not be a safe place for humans without intelligent decisions made by mankind. If mankind does not treat the Earth with compassion and decide to make unintelligent decisions, there are multiple consequences that may follow. Man may no longer have a role in the world, the only thing left to show human life is the remains of old war broken towns, and technology can ruin the world and annihilate human life. Man will eventually destroy the Earth and the people living in it.
Earth will outlive us all and when the human species eventually dies out, Earth will still be here fixing itself from the damage we have caused, yet continuing with the natural disasters. I do admit, we are polluting the planet, but there will always be some sort of life on Earth even if humans are not. People should not be too worried about destroying the planet because it will heal itself. If people begin to pollute it too much, Earth will kill us off. Roderick Nash, along with many other people, underestimates the power of the Earth. It can take care of itself just like how it has been for over a billion years.
Ray Bradbury uses juxtaposition by contrasting this imaginary world that is set in the twenty-first century to very ordinary actions. Although the house is automated and again, empty, the kitchen is making the ideal breakfast for a family of four, and singing basic nursery rhymes such as “Rain, rain, go away...”. These humanlike events do not compare to the unoccupied house. The description of the house becomes more animalistic and almost oxymoronic when the, “rooms were acrawl with the small cleaning animals, all rubber and metal.” The almost constant cleaning of the tiny robot mice suggest that the previous household was very orderly and precise. Through Bradbury’s description of the outside of the house and its surroundings he indirectly tells the reader about the events that may have occurred. A burnt “silhouette” of the family imprinted on the west wall of the house is the only thing left of them. In the image each person is doing something picking flowers, moving the lawn, playing with a ball. This was a family having a good time, but little did they know the catastrophe they were about to experience would end their
In Ray Bradbury’s " There Will Come Soft Rains, " he fabricates a story with two themes about the end of the world. The first theme is that humans are so reliant on technology, that it leads the destruction of the world, and the second theme is that a world without humans would be peaceful, however no one would be able to enjoy it. Bradbury uses literary devices, such as narrative structure, personnification, and pathos to effectively address human extinction. One aspect which illustrates how he portrays human extinction can be identified as narrative structure, he structured the story in a way that it slowly abolishes the facade of technological improvements made by people to reveal the devastation that technology can cause. The story started
Many works of literature describe the end of the world as the end to humanity from a natural disaster such as an earthquake, tsunami, or volcanic eruption. Some go as far as deadly viruses eliminating the human race. In the short stories, There Will Come Soft Rains, by Ray Bradbury, and Chippoke Na Gomi, by Misha Nogha, both authors predict the end of the world due to human conflicts and destruction. Bradbury and Nogha both focused on the aftermath of a nuclear bomb. In both stories, There Will Come Soft Rains and Chippoke Na Gomi, human-developed technology intending to make life better can have the opposite effect thereby creating the destruction of humanity.
The article by Jared Diamond called “The End of The World as We Know Them” explains to us we have the chance to change our future from previous civilianization like Mayans. One alternative that we can infer is a stronger focus on benefiting the earth and not our self. For example instead of using war to gain more resources from other countries and cause more damage to other civilization, we should all live in peace and live natural energy from the sun like solar panels. If we keep the ground that we live on, we can keep our lives that we dwell on.
While reading different stories, you can find many similarities between the texts. For example, Romeo and Juliet and Pyramus and Thisbe are two stories that have many similarities. Throughout the story, the characters have many of the same traits. Similar events take place in the two stories. All these events lead both stories to a tragic ending. Stories can be similar in many ways. The characters, the setting, and the story line itself. Stories can also be very different. One may talk about an event that will break your heart, while another might bring a smile to your face. The two stories The Man to Send Rain Clouds and Old Man at the Temple have many similarities and differences in their settings due to the place, time, and culture.
The first story “Harrison Bergeron” mainly discussed that government use handicaps let everyone “equal”, which mean make everyone in the average intelligence. In that society, “people must be equal” is their primary goal. The government even lets above average intelligence people suffer to exchange equality. People should not stress under this circumstance. This can show that technology in that time is really maturing and accurate. In this story, technology totally changed people’s normal life. Which is similar to the story “There will come soft rains”.
The short story there will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury, has a poem in the story called There will come soft rains by Sara Teasdale. The story is based around the meaning of the poem making the story closely relate to the poem and the two are very similar in nature. The poem is about how nature will go on without humanity if humanity is wiped out. The short story is about a futuristic house that is continuing it’s normal routine even though the humans are gone. In the sense that things will go on without humanity, the two stories are very similar.
with a vivid imagery of a world that was already falling apart, prior to humanity’s infliction upon
There Will Come Soft Rains is a short tale by Ray Bradbury that is in regards to the high-technology smart house in a post-human world. Bradbury wrote and published this story in one of his most acclaimed collection of stories, ‘The Martain Chronicles’ in 1951. Written in that era where many people were in deep concerns about the devastating effects of the nuclear weapons, this story depicts the world under which humans beings are victims of the nuclear force distraction. The short story is in regards to a planet devoid of humans. The tale narrates that the nuclear war washed people from the face of the earth and what remained was just a house. There Will Come Soft Rains concentrate on world annihilation, and human disappearance. The authorpatently talks about the life after humans are vanished.
the human race will be taken to the point of complete break down. He feels that
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In “The Day After Tomorrow” a climatologist’s warning of the possibility of massive cataclysmic climate changes caused by global warming go unheeded. His predictions of the consequences of such actions just so happen to occur sooner than anyone had ever expected. This movie served as the ultimate example what could happen if as a world community we do not clean up our acts. Continued consumption of nonrenewable resources, increased carbon dioxide emissions and further depletion of the Ozone layer could though most likely not on the scale illustrated occur in one form or another. The moral of this film is summed up by Dennis Quaid’s character in the last scene when he mutters his last few lines stating that hopefully humani...
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In Dipesh Chakrabarty’s essay, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” he begins with “…the proposition that anthropogenic explanations of climate change spell the collapse of the age-old humanist distinction between natural history and human history.” With this initial statement, Chakrabarty declares that the advent of manmade climate change in the anthropocene, humans can no longer be considered separately from nature as they had been previously segregated by Enlightenment and western thinking. In other words, “humanism,” or human-centered thinking is neither relevant nor reasonable in the face of global climate change. According to Chakrabarty, since human and natural history are both intrinsically tied together, the fate of mankind is now