outline and essay
Loveleen k
ThereWillComeSoftRains.pptx
There Will Come Soft Rains
A poem and a short story
Sara Teasdale: Life and Work
Sara Teasdale, in full Sara Trevor Teasdale, (born August 8, 1884, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died January 29, 1933, New York, New York), American poet whose short, personal lyrics were noted for their classical simplicity and quiet intensity.
Teasdale was educated privately and made frequent trips to Chicago, where she eventually became part of Harriet Monroe’s Poetry magazine circle.
In 1918 she won the Columbia University Poetry Society prize (forerunner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry) and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America for Love Songs (1917).
In 1933, in frail health after a recent bout of pneumonia, she took her own life with an overdose of barbiturates.
Teasdale’s poems are consistently classical in style. She wrote technically excellent, pure, openhearted lyrics usually in such conventional verse forms as quatrains or sonnets.
Notable works:
first volume of verse, Sonnets to Duse, and Other Poems.
A second volume, Helen of Troy, and Other Poems, followed in 1911.
in 1915 her third collection of poems, Rivers to the Sea, was published.
edited two anthologies, The Answering Voice: One Hundred Love Lyrics by Women (1917), and Rainbow Gold for Children (1922).
Flame and Shadow (1920), Dark of the Moon (1926), and Stars To-night (1930)
1933: Her last and perhaps finest collection of verse, Strange Victory
“There Will Come Soft Rains”
This poem was first published in July 1918 in Harper’s Magazine
Subsequently the poem was included in Sara Teasdale’s 1920 collection Flame and Shadow
It is a lyric poem of six rhyming couplets:
First Couplet:
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
- introduces a soothing emotion as it portrays “soft rains” falling on the ground
The second couplet:
And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild-plum trees in tremulous white
- represents the joy and happiness of the a
“There Will Come Soft Rains”
Third Couplet:
Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
- “fence-wire” is the first indication of a human made object in the poem; it shows how the Robin is sitting on the fence that was perhaps once made by a human being
Fourth Couplet:
And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.
- directly indicating that the war (in this case first war is just ending while the poem was first written) is responsible for wiping out humanity from the planet. But nature has reclaimed the planet and “no one will care” about the reasons why the war was fought. The memory of the human world has been erased.
“There Will Come Soft Rains”
Fifth Couplet
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly;
- the insignificance of humanity
Six Couplet:
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone.
- “Spring” is being personified here. Spring signifies new beginnings and this time the new world that is being restored in the aftermath of the post apocalyptic world does not know about the existence and disappearance of humanity
Apocalypse and Post-apocalypse
Apocalypse originates from the Greek word “Apo-calyptein”, which means “to unveil”
Apocalyptic art and literature presents (or unveils) a setting where the world (as we know it) has been destroyed
The literary and artistic “imagination” of the apocalypse and its aftermath often involves violent and grotesque imageries
The “apocalyptic genre” is a genre of crisis: apocalyptic literary and creative arts often represent the aftermath of a universal destruction
The apocalyptic vision holds a universality to it: social, economic, cultural orders which dictate an individual’s position within the hierarchy of our known world vanishes in an apocalyptic setting: thus, an apocalyptic world can be emancipating
Post-apocalypse
Post apocalyptic world can represent a re-birth
After the world is destroyed, post-apocalypse sets in
Post-apocalyptic literature tries to imagine how the world would look like after it has been destroyed
Postapocalyptic world can be either Utopic or Dystopic
Apocalypse and Post-apocalypse in Sara Teasdale’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”
In “There Will Come Soft Rains”, Sara Teasdale shows us a post-apocalyptic world
The poem hints at the previous destruction of the world due to War; so the apocalypse was brought on by the war
In the post-apocalyptic period, Teasdale imagines a world of harmony and peace where nature blossoms; but this world has no place for human beings
So, in Teasdale’s poem a beautiful world in born at the expense of the complete eradication of humanity
The poem serves as a reminder about the impending threat of an apocalypse caused by wars
It also warns that the earth will continue to exit with or without the human beings; so, perhaps it is in the best interest of the human beings to protect the planet and themselves by avoiding warfare
Important terms to understand the poem
Lyric, a verse or poem that is, or supposedly is, susceptible of being sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument (in ancient times, usually a lyre) or that expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song. Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a story. Elegies, odes, and sonnets are all important kinds of lyric poetry.
Couplet, a pair of end-rhymed lines of verse that are self-contained in grammatical structure and meaning. A couplet may be formal (or closed), in which case each of the two lines is end-stopped, or it may be run-on (or open), with the meaning of the first line continuing to the second
Ray Bradbury and “There Will Come Soft Rains”
Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451(1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles(1950) and The Illustrated Man(1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films
There Will Come Soft Rainswas first published in the May 6, 1950 issue of Collier's. Later that same year the story was included in Bradbury's famous short story collection The Martian Chronicles(1950).
When Bradbury's story was first published, it was set in the year 1985. Later versions have updated the year to 2026 and 2057. The story is not meant to be a specific prediction about the future, but rather to show a possibility that, at any time, could lie just around the corner.
Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains”
The house is personified and becomes a representation of the suffering of humanity. It dies a gruesome death, echoing what must have befallen humanity yet not showing it to us directly.:
"The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air."
The parallel with the human body is almost complete here: bones, skeleton, nerves, skin, veins, capillaries. The destruction of the personified house allows readers to feel the extraordinary sadness and intensity of the situation, whereas a graphic description of the death of a human being might simply make readers recoil in horror
Comparison of the Apocalypse and Postapocalyptic worlds
While Sara Teasdale imagined an idyllic post-apocalyptic world in which nature continues peacefully, beautifully, and indifferently after the extinction of humankind, Ray Bradbury’s short story of the same title presents a Technocratic post-apocalyptic world
Though both texts (the poem and the short story) offer indications about the horrors of war and hold the wars responsible for the destruction of the world as we know it, Ray Bradbury’s short story shows us the continuing negative effects of the warfare
Writing in the aftermath of the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II, Ray Bradbury is much more concerned with the power of technology and its influence on humanity and the world
The apocalypse of the short story is triggered by nuclear explosion
Bradbury’s short story shows how the advancements in technologies have allowed this house to function without human beings. But at the same time, the erasure of humanity from the space is also caused by the same technology
Comparison
Where Teasdale has circling swallows, singing frogs, and whistling robins, Bradbury offers "lonely foxes and whining cats," as well as the emaciated family dog, "covered with sores," which "ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a circle and died." Thus in the short story, animals and the natural world fare no better than humans.
While Teasdale’s poem offers a soothing, peaceful and hopeful image of harmonious nature restoring itself, Bradbury’s post apocalyptic technocratic world is melancholic. Bradbury's only survivors are imitations of nature: robotic cleaning mice, aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and the colorful exotic animals projected onto the glass walls of the children's nursery.
The short story uses words like "afraid," "empty," "emptiness," "hissing," and "echoing," to create a cold, ominous feeling that is the opposite of Teasdale's poem.
Comparison
In Teasdale's poem, no element of nature would notice or care whether humans were gone. But almost everything in Bradbury's story is human-made and seems irrelevant in the absence of people. As Bradbury writes:
"The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.”
Meals are prepared but not eaten. Bridge games are set up, but no one plays them. Martinis are made but not drunk. Poems are read, but there's no one to listen. The story is full of automated voices recounting times and dates that are meaningless without a human presence.
The absence of humanity is overall a positive consequence in Teasdale’s poem whereas the erasure of humanity is regretted in Bradbury’s short story.
