The idea of the downfall of humanity resonates across many platforms, all sing the same melancholy song; when we finally meet our end, no one, and no thing will notice. This one theme can be found within poems, short stories, and even interpretive art. The authors and artists show skillful manipulation through their use of color, imagery, and poetic refrains, to tell the tale of humanity's fall and the resumption of life afterwards. However whether they mean it as a warning, or entertainment is disputable.
When looking at a demolished “Big Ben”, one can only hope that none such futures will come to pass, that humanity will last, and nature never claw her way out of the grave we built and take back her rightful place at the top. How could this decolate image of grey and green not chill you to the bone, when you see what humanity would be reduced to, ruble. All while the plants thrive, growing, and curling their tendrils over what once was, proud to finally have the earth all to herself. We’re used to seeing this beautiful monument in clear blue skies and bustling cities, not abandoned in a monochrom platet of grey skies and foliage claiming its sides. The
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Through the story the reader can hear the words of a speaking clock which are almost always in rhyme. The clock tells the absent family to go “off to school, off to work, run run, eight-one! (Bradbury Page 1)”, unaware of their tragic demise. This keeps up throughout the story, pacing the slow realization that the family won’t be listening to the clock anymore and adding to the theme of humanity’s loss going unnoticed. The whole house follows along with routine, cooking, cleaning, unaware of the fact that there’s no one to cook and clean for. All the way up until it was destroyed the house failed to notice the death of who it was built to
We are all connected by universal empathy, yet separated by unique personal discoveries. Not until we lose sight of conventional shores by discovering our inner darkness, do we find the courage to break free of the façade society has created. “North Coast Town” and “Flames and Dangling Wire” by Robert Gray question the cultural impact of perceived “progress”, while Roald Dahl’s post WW2 short story “Genesis and Catastrophe” forces us to rediscover our inner darkness, re-evaluate our personal morals and our inner strength to challenge society and make our own discoveries. “Flames and Dangling Wire” is a didactic poem in which Gray discovers and warns the reader about the consequences of our modern love of materialism.
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
The first major message from the poem, “Ozymandias” is that all great things come to end. Whether it is about a person, a country, or an idea, these...
The 19th century Australian Novelist and short story writer, Henry Lawson, uses distinctly visual techniques of writing, which allowing responders to visualize the hardships faced during . Australia’s colonial period The iconic story “The Drover’s Wife” reveals the hardships faced by women and the sacrifices and adjustments they made to survive. Lawson’s story “In a Dry Season” gives the reader an insight into the difficult lives of Australians during the colonial period. The Artwork “Sunday Evening” by Russell Drysdale stresses the hardships faced in the Australian outback. His artwork compliments Henry Lawson short stories.
The reader does not know of the nuclear war right away. Ray Bradbury reveals it through the description of the outside of the house and its surroundings. “Ten o 'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave of a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles” (Bradbury, par.1).The story is about a smart house that has continued on after all humans have passed away. The house is the only house left standing in the ruined city.
with a vivid imagery of a world that was already falling apart, prior to humanity’s infliction upon
In the poem “The City of the End of Things” by Archibald Lampman, he paints an image of a dystopian and mechanical future. The theme of this poem is a prediction of the natural world's destruction and of the current industrialized future. Humans cannot live without nature, thus with the destruction of the natural world comes the downfall of humanity. Lampman wrote “Its roofs and iron towers have grown / None knoweth how high within the night”(9-10), which provokes a picture of a city that is ever growing, seemingly overnight.
Love has the power to do anything. Love can heal and love can hurt. Love is something that is indescribable and difficult to understand. Love is a feeling that cannot be accurately expressed by a word. In the poem “The Rain” by Robert Creeley, the experience of love is painted and explored through a metaphor. The speaker in the poem compares love to rain and he explains how he wants love to be like rain. Love is a beautiful concept and through the abstract comparison to rain a person is assisted in developing a concrete understanding of what love is. True beauty is illuminated by true love and vice versa. In other words, the beauty of love and all that it entails is something true.
...t act on its own programming. The house cannot therefore make any decisions to stop working from the humans who are already dead. The house therefore represents order in the midst of chaos; the house is the only thing that is functioning with all the things around it destroyed. It is the only thing that bears meaning despite there being total destruction after nuclearwar; it is the only place that holds to purpose despite the meaningless things happening. The house tries to fight entropy but does not win, it rubble just falls into the larger rubble of the city that is now destroyed. This symbolizes the pessimistic view of determination of humans in the search for meaning in the world (Chopin, There Will Come Soft Rains).
The story begins with a rather heavy premise of the world’s impending demise, yet, this premise is immediately juxtaposed by descriptions of children playing together in “the light of the green hurricane lamps” and the “easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air” (Bradbury 1). There is a serenity to be found that simply doesn’t match up with how somber the topic should be, and the calm nature of that introductory scene never really fades away as the plot progresses. Despite this being the last night of the world, the couple takes time to wash and stack dishes with a “special neatness”, and they sit “together by the fireplace watching the charcoal embers” as time passes by (Bradbury 3-4). There is no fear, despair, or panic found within the atmosphere, only peace, and this was intentional. The atmosphere suggests that when faced with the totality of existence what really matters are the subtle things that bring about personal peace. When all is said and done, life is found in the smell of coffee while watching the fireplace.
It is nature that destroys humankind when the sun disappears and the volcano erupts in “Darkness” and in “Ozymandias,” it is the sand and wind that causes the statue to fall. In Byron’s poem, humans lose the fight for their lives, and in Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias’s statue is powerless because it is lifeless, emphasizing the importance of the themes of life and death to the shared topic of destruction. Although they explore destruction using different language, they share the use of ideas about the destruction of civilization, and the fall of humankind because of nature, life and
The natural world does not care for the house as the humans did and there is nothing there for the house to accomplish. “It was raining outside.” (Bradbury 1)This rain suggests a sadness and gloom that has fallen over the house from the loss of its “gods”. This happened at eight o’clock, and when ten o’clock rolls around “The sun came out from behind the rain.” The sun represents the shedding of light on the dark world and bringing forth of new information. It is here in the story that one learns that the family is actually dead and not simply on a trip. “The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.” This falling light epitomizes the end of an era of not only humans but the end of the life of this house. This sentence, along with the poem by Sara Teasdale later in the story, foreshadow the end outcome of this story; the death of all man-made
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. Moreover, unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” This quote by Ernst Fischer, a German composer, means that truth in art exposes the parts of society, and of life, that no one wants to see. In order for art to change society, it must first reflect the fears and failures of its people. The artist can change how people think of themselves and the world by using less conventional methods of creating art. The artist, in doing this, introduces new ideas of human placement in time and space, new frontiers of thought, that are furthered by the disciplines of science and philosophy. The artist works to introduces unique- and sometimes offensive- ideas so that society will be exposed to new ways of thinking and understanding the world. The artist does this through experimentation with color, style, and form. Therefore, the purpose of the artist should be to challenge how individuals perceive themselves and the offensive aspects of society reflected in art to bring about innovations in the greater society.
For hundreds of centuries, man has pondered what revelations or spiritual awakenings will occur in future's time. Poet William Yeats, has written, "The Second Coming," which foretells how the Second Coming brings horror and repression to the world. Yeats takes into speculation that the future will certainly bring further darkness than is already present in the current world. He employs various symbols and allusions to assert his claims of the world's ultimate demise. The purpose of these symbols and allusions make it possible to fully understand Yeats's point of view of the fall of our present civilization and the rise of a new civilization with a gloomy future.
I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter—and engraver. I had a great fondness for him. I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd ...