Skip to main content

Why did Ray Bradbury write "There Will Come Soft Rains"

There are several ways to answer the question of why an author wrote something, and with a writer like Bradbury, there may be more answers than with some others.


To start, Bradbury was a professional writer. Writing is what he did. I know that sounds basic, but never leave out the option of writing for money.


A second reason Bradbury wrote this is that he consciously and intentionally wrote a lot of short stories, to teach himself how to write. For an extended period, he wrote a short story every week. That’s 52 a year.


A third and more substantial reason can be seen in the title. Bradbury explicitly studied classic pieces of writing, and this story is a modern, technologized fictional version of Sarah Teasdale’s poem “There Will Come Soft Rain,” which also evokes a world that goes on after humanity dies.


A fourth reason is seen throughout his work: Bradbury was deeply concerned with how various kinds of technology were dehumanizing human life or replacing people. You can see this in “The Pedestrian,” where no one walks anymore, or in Fahrenheit 451, where people are more concerned about mass media than living people.


And a final reason is when Bradbury lived and wrote. He wrote this not long after the first atomic bomb was dropped (just a few years), when a lot of American society was becoming actively concerned about the possibility of atomic war. This story sums up some of those fears.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more