Comparative Commentary of "There Will Come Soft Rains" and the Teasdale's Poem.

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English Essay:

Comparative Commentary of

“There Will Come Soft Rains” and the Teasdale’s Poem

The short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” as well as the poem with the same title by Teasdale warns people of today about the chilling view of the future if the overconfidence in their immortality persists. It is showing how insignificant our achievements on earth is – technology and weapons. In both of the plots, compared to human and technology, nature is described as the unrelenting force and ultimate survivor of the world. Human is illustrated as the weakest and most insignificant. It is nothing but a minor stain on the infinite earth, one that destroys itself in a second with its own creations. Personification and paradox is mainly used as the writer’s tool to convey the message and theme.

Comparing the language, the poem uses long continuing phrases and running lines in order to show the peace and calmness of nature. In contrast, the short story uses short phrases to build up a tense atmosphere and to show that a thousand things are happening at once. This contrasts the separate worlds that nature and men are in. In nature, everything is calm and soft. In human society, everything is in war and chaos. It gives us an insight that peace may be the only way to survive in the world and not technology or war. Beautiful language is used in both writings to illustrate terrifying facts like the perish of mankind.

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Both nature and technology are treated as humans to compare their power. The house that talks and sings represents technology while nature is represented as Spring in the poem and the fire and branches in the short story. Firstly, it describes how men see themselves as superior. They see themselves as “gods” by creating a perfect house with everything done automatically. From the paradox talking about artificial nature on the walls of a nursery, we can see that humans actually tried to play the role of God the Creator by firstly destroying a forest and then desperately recreating it ...

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