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Technology In There Will Come Soft Rains, And Fahren

Decent Essays

Christian Lous Lange said it the best, “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.” This portrays the overall theme to Ray Bradbury’s futuristic novels and short stories alike. His astounding predictions of technology’s controlling mannerisms towards its owners, have become a profound reality throughout time. Several of Bradbury’s literary masterpieces share the mutual technological overload as technology is worshipped, however conflicts between static characters and dynamic characters uncover the underlying mental and physical problems technology creates. Dissection and analyzation of Bradbury’s works The Veldt, Soft Rains, and Fahrenheit 451, along with The Book of Ecclesiastes and personal thoughts, leads to the conclusion of …show more content…

Fictional or not, having a house which has the ability to perform any tasks, is a danger to one’s mental health. Page 169 of the literature textbook contains an excerpt from There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury, which describes a shocking truth to reality. “The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and re-repeating its sounds into the emptiness.” Further into the short story, occupants of the house are revealed to have died from advanced technology - a nuclear bomb, but the death of the family does not affect the technologically advanced house. People don’t appear to realize that technology doesn’t care about its owners, it will continue to live until they have long since expired. Similarly, a poem titled “Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale, the inspiration for Bradbury’s There Will Come Soft Rains, has a metaphor for technology in it. “Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly..” In this instance, the birds, trees, and all other aspects of nature are being referred to as the technology in the story; technology wouldn’t care if humans died off, it will just keep living and going through its automatic tasks. Technology is only here to babysit us while we live, but once we are gone, technology will have no …show more content…

The Book of Ecclesiastes by Solomon, questions whether or not life is worthwhile, and with technology life truly isn’t too worthwhile as there is no face-to-face or emotional interactions. According to Ecclesiastes, “There is a time for everything...a time to be born and a time to die…” Unfortunately, technology can be seen as something which steals the life between birth and death. While technology does have its time to be used, this time slot is not twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. Who knows, maybe technology’s time is now not later. EIther way, Bradbury assisted in proving that the technological era will last forever if major difference doesn’t occur in humanity’s unnatural obsession with

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