There Will Come Soft Rains Dystopian Analysis

What are the conditions when society gets destroyed? Dystopias can be described as an imagined place where everything is miserable. They are characterized by human misery and poverty. The following essay will contain evidence from three stories; The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, and There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury. The authors of the dystopian stories, all demonstrate the theme of an oppressive government which assists them in showing how the government has the power to destroy society by stoning people, putting restraints on them and even using nuclear bombs, which all cause the death of innocent citizens.

One important theme in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is the theme of dangerous tradition.

In detail, there are no human characters in the story. They died in a nuclear explosion. The speaker makes a comment that a silhouette of the owners of the house was left on a wall showing their final actions. For example,“The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in the paint of a man mowing a lawn... Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant”(Bradbury 2). This quote demonstrates how the family died. They were doing their regular activities and in a split second their lives perished. This quote also demonstrates how a family of five were together for a few minutes and then violently split up. Another example of the theme of death is the dog. For example, “The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores...its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died”(Bradbury 3). This quote demonstrates that because of the nuclear explosion, the dog has suffered both physically and mentally. It also demonstrates how the dog died, by looking for its owners. These quotes relate to the thesis of corruptive government because the characters were killed by a bomb which was set off by the government. Therefore, the theme of death by a government is clearly shown in There Will Come Soft

This lets them demonstrate how the government has control to destroy society by killing innocent citizens. From the above, we can see how the government can control a population by stoning people to death, putting restraints on citizens, and even using bombs just out of cruelty. It is essential to recognize that dystopias are important to understanding for our society and government because it goes to show that if we don’t take action or speak out to our government, the government can take us over. On a final note, we can relate these stories to real life because some of these situations, like the nuclear bombing, have actually occurred in our