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There Will Come Soft Rains Literary Devices

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Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” is a short story about a house that is completely self-sufficient. The story goes on to show what this house is capable of and how efficient this house really is. Bradbury uses literary elements such as similes, sentence structure and repetition to help the reader comprehend the tone throughout the story. Firstly, Bradbury uses a simile when he describes the destruction that the fire is inflicting upon the house, “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” (Bradbury 3). Through the use of descriptive similes, Bradbury is able to …show more content…

In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney. Two thirty-five. Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls” (Bradbury 2). In this example, the reader is able to see through the use of short sentences, that the tone seems more rushed and urgent, while the longer sentences add more detail and are more relaxed. Lastly, Bradbury’s use of repetition adds to the tone of the story “Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…” (Bradbury 4). This example of repetition is used at the end of the story showing how to house is almost completely broken and it has managed to say the date, but the house is stuck on repeat because of the destruction that has taken place. In some stories, the author may try to turn a tragedy around and have a happy ending, but in this story, Bradbury uses repetition to create a dark tone and remind the reader that this is not the death of a human, but an electronic house. To conclude, literary elements can completely change the mood of a story. They can completely change the way someone reads and comprehends a story. Bradbury uses similes, sentence structure and repetition to help the reader comprehend the tone throughout the

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