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Compare And Contrast By The Waters Of Babylon And There Will Come Soft Rains

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By the Waters of Babylon and There will Come Soft Rains. The story “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and the story “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét seem very different at first glance but with a deeper look have many of the same elements. “...Babylon” was written during the time when the possibility of a second world war hung over Europe. The future was unknown. This of not knowing what the future would be like plays out in “...Babylon” where Benet paints a picture of how it might be and what our world may look like after an apocalypse. Bradbury is known for writing science fiction and fantasy. His story “...Rains”, like “...Babylon”, creates a picture of an apocalypse that could be in our future. Although the …show more content…

The biggest sign of this in “...Babylon” is when John states at the end of the story that the “Place of the Gods” is newyork. A city that is thriving now but in the story is completely empty. In “...Rains” we know it is post apocalyptic a lot earlier. At the top of the second page it says “At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.”
A huge difference in setting is the people. In “...Babylon” there are people right away. It starts out with john telling us a little about himself, his world, and his father. “...Rains doesn’t seem much different at first. The house goes through it’s daily life but after a few paragraphs we realize that something is horribly wrong. There are no people eating their breakfast or going to work. In fact we find out that the family has totally perished along with the rest of the city. There is not one human in the story.
The narration in the stories is very different in each. In “...Babylon” the narration is from john’s point of view. We hear John’s thoughts and we see through his eyes. On the other hand “...Rains” is in third person where we see everything that is going on not just what is happening to one of the characters. For example we read about the city and the way it looks but we also see the inside of the house and the different funtions of the house. Whereas in “...Babylon” we only see what john is seeing we don’t hear about what is going on back in the village or what

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