“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” (Lovecraft). This is exactly how Ray Bradbury felt about the constant improvement and advancements regarding machines. He was terrified of the possible negative outcomes that come with electronic development and tried to influence his writing with this fear. It is possible that the terror came from what he had to experience when young. In these times, the human race was in turmoil due to World War II and the Cold War, and he was probably deeply influenced by these events. These are clear examples of how machine improvement led to devastating results, causing mass destruction and millions of deaths. Ray Bradbury was a popular …show more content…
Teasdale talks about a feathery fire, and how no one will notice the deaths and losses once the war is over (Bradbury/Teasdale). The story follows a similar plot, having the people disappear due to various attacks, remembered solely by the house, but then completely forgotten when the house catches on fire and turns into dust. The poem matches what will happen next in the story, creating a comparison between Teasdale and Bradbury’s storyline. “The irony exists in the way in which Bradbury’s fictional world in “There Will Come Soft Rains” parallels the imaginative world of Teasdale’s poem” (Haisty). Bradbury uses the irony of the house choosing this specific poem to make the reader notice how Sara Teasdale had explained the results of war first, and that she was not wrong. He wanted to show us two scenarios in which the people are destroyed, and there is no one left to remember them. Bradbury tries to warn us that if we continue to kill people with powerful machines, soon there would be no humans at all. By this, he conveys fear and death, or more importantly, the fear of death for the reader to incorporate in their dependency on