The Role Of Isolation In Ray Bradbury's The Long Rain

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Imagine a world of rain relents, where clouds cover the sky in perpetual grayness, and the ground is forever damp from the everlasting downpour. In the book, The Long Rain by Ray Bradbury, a group of space explorers travel through Venus and find themselves stranded on the planet. Having lost contact and limited food, the explorers struggle through the treacherous terrain and battle with the psychological toll from their isolation on the planet. Due to the frustrations of being stranded on Venus, the space explorers faced a series of perilous events. That being said, the first and biggest point of this story is about the characters. While the characters had to struggle through the weather, and many other events, they also had to struggle to …show more content…

Simmon and the Lieutenant started walking towards the next sun dome, but Simmon had lost it. He could not walk anymore and decided to just give up, the isolation and the never-ending rain had gotten to him. Simmon, tired, having no sleep, and no motivation, said to the lieutenant “Look, it's a matter of time, either I die now or in a few hours. Wait, you’ll get to the next sun dome, if you ever get there, and find rain coming through the roof. Won't that be nice?”. Having endured enough, Simmon tells the lieutenant to get out of sight so he can shoot …show more content…

The group had to travel through a monstrous storm of bleaching rain, and while that's a big deal throughout the story, the space explorers also had to struggle with leadership. Having come too far into the planet the explorers could now not turn around, and had to fight through the treacherous weather, having to walk on the unstable muddy terrain, the explorers finally reached a sun dome, but they soon realized after entering the dome that it had been abandoned. The sun dome was empty and dark, there wasn't any sign of it being recently inhabited “The sun dome was empty and dark. There was no food waiting. and through a thousand holes which had been newly punctured in the ceiling water streamed”. Having no food now, and having lost 2 members of the group, Simmons was annoyed and the lieutenant was devastated. Simmons believed that because the lieutenant couldn't give a proper explanation and was lying to the group to come all this far just to keep them happy “Or are you lying to keep us happy” Simmons asked and later towards the end of the story when it was just him and the lieutenant he decided to stay back, because he did not trust the lieutenants words anymore. Every conflict the characters faced was because of the setting, had they not been on a never-ending rainy planet, they might have survived, had they found sun domes before their endurance gave up, more of them might have

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