Within seconds all is destroyed buildings, people, and animals, but nature still thrives in every way. Survivors try 0 run away but start to die from disease within a day. Rubble is blown away by the lonely wind, and animals run astray, the sun beams down with sorrow and pity at the dark, destroyed, and dead city. This is what the city looks like in the short story “August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury because of war, Bradbury’s story introduces the theme, war does nothing good.
His story also shares that theme and other themes with the poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sarah Teasdale. In the story, there is one house that survived a nuclear bomb with a direct hit on allendale, California and eventually it is destroyed by nature just as we, humans, destroyed parts of nature for our own use.
The story shows that without humans, human‘s creations can’t live forever but nature can easily live without humans.
For instance, the house eventually breaks from a tree bough but nature survives the nuclear bomb The tree is a part of nature, and the quote, “How carefully had it inquired, who goes there? What’s the password? and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats” clearly shows that nature still survives. Moreover, another quote “if a sparrow brushed the window, the shades snapped up” clearly shows that there are animals and trees, which means nature still survives in Allendale. Furthermore, war is bad because many people die and it’s most likely going to be our downfall.
To illustrate, humans caused Allendale to be destroyed. In the poem, nature is thriving and is unaware of the war the poem is referring to. It has not changed a bit and it shows that nature doesn‘t care. For instance, the quote from the poem “not one would mind, neither bird nor tree if mankind perished utterly; and spring herself, when she woke at dawn would scarcely know we were gone” clearly shows that nature won’t really care that we were gone. Furthermore the quote “There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, and swallows circling with their shimmering sound, and frogs in the pools singing at night, and wild plum trees in tremulous white. Robins will wear their feathery fire, whistling their whims on a low fence-wire” shows that nature is going on just as it does normally showing not one bit of notice that a war happened.
The story and the poem have one major difference and that’s the only thing that separates them the one difference is that poem shows nature blossoming and the story shows humans‘ inventions faltering and being destroyed. One similarity is that they both take place in a setting where a war happened and humans have been eliminated along with their creations. Both the poem and the story have the theme that only death and destruction comes from the wart. For example, in the poem there are only animals and spring not noticing humans are gone meaning the human race went extinct which is because of the war the poem is referring to. For instance, in the story, Allendale gets destroyed from a nuclear bomb in war and it kills many people, which clearly shows death and destruction therefore, war only leads to death and destruction. The poem shows nature thriving and the story shows humans’ creations faltering without humans to sum everything up, the poem has the same theme that only death and destruction comes from war and nature always outlasts humans and humans‘ creations.
Dual Soft Rain Titles. (2023, Jan 11). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/there-will-come-soft-rains-by-ray-bradbury-and-there-will-come-soft-rains-by-sarah-teasdale/