Throughout the short story “The Last Night of the World” the author, Ray Bradbury, leads the readers to believe that there will be no tomorrow. Even with the inevitable approaching, the main characters continue upon their daily routine. Though this is odd behavior, we see through literary devices used by Bradbury the true intentions of the passage; the passage is not meant to persuade readers to act similarly to the characters, but the opposite. The readers have to focus intensely on these literary devices to draw out the intended message of Bradbury. By looking at the language, the punctuation and the repetition, we see that Bradbury is unfaltering in his stance towards living one’s life to the fullest. The audience will look at the literary devices and how each one supports Bradbury’s goal that is to convince the reader to live an outstanding life, do not be dull ( I’ll call this lifestyle the “Bradburry life”). This is important because the opinion that everyone should live the “Bradbury life” is contradictory to the actions of the couple in the story; leaving the readers with an ambiguous mindset about the story. This ambiguity is purposeful and is meant for the reader to discover what is meant in the language and what is right. 

First the language is contradictory to the actions of the characters in “The Last Night of the World”. This is significant because while the characters mope around continuing their daily routine the language suggest to the readers that they should live the “ Bradbury life”. The language is the easiest to see the contradictions in because it sets a different mood than the actions do. The language gives off a great, positive atmosphere while the actions of the characters are dulling and lifeless. If anyone asks the question “why” and another responds “because today is today and there has never been a day like today” that would be extremely uplifting and would motivate the questioner to do something relating to their question but in the story the opposite happens.  The language talks about living in the moment and doings thing for now while the couple literally does nothing special, nothing out of routine. Having these statements so lively is the most important part of the story because it is the strongest representation of the message about the “Bradbury life” by Bradbury in “The Last Night of the World”. Now that we have seen how the language in the story challenges the actions of the characters by telling the audience to live in the moment let's look at the punctuation then later the repetition.

Now let’s look at the punctuation and how similarly to the language it counters the outcome of the story and supports the ideal ‘Bradbury life”. The quote is all one sentence, no breaks within it, only semicolons. By stretching out the sentence into one, Bradbury is trying to put emphasis on the meaning of the language within the quote, which is to not let circumstances hold you back and to live in the moment. Bradbury wants to put the emphasis on the quote because of the strong language and dialogue, putting emphasis on this will only strengthen the meaning behind it supporting the fact that everyone should be living in the moment and denying the exact opposite.The reason behind not wanting to end the sentence is because it would put a break in the dramatic dialogue and the significance behind it. Putting a break here would impede on the purpose of the dialogue and also the true purpose of the entire passage. The quote, having be so smooth in punctuation, just rolls out when reading it. This is another way of  reinforcing to the language within the quote, opposing the action of the couple in the story. It is important for all punctuation to support the language in the quote because the language is the strongest evidence behind the purpose of the story which is to live the “Bradbury life”. Similarly to the punctuation it is important for the repetition to also support the language. 

Lastly, the repetition in the short story, similarly to the language and the punctuation, it offsets the operations of the characters in the short story by challenging their actions and supporting the language which so obviously disagrees with the actions of the characters. 

Repetition can have different meanings depending on what is stressed. In this case it is the motivational language within the quote. In this short quote Bradbury repetitively uses the words “it’s”, “it is”, “are” and “ever”; not that these words are motivational but the language emphasised by these repetitively used words. The language emphasised talks about living in the moment, “Maybe it’s because it was never ‘today’ ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it.”  Having the repetition in such dialogue shows support for that dialogue, in this case it is a positive, uplifting atmosphere of the language in the text. Therefore the repetition in the quote underpins the meaning of the language within it. Which also expresses the disagreement the repetition has with the actions because of the contradictions between the actions and the language. Also repeating certain words gives the quote a poetic feel which, like the punctuation, makes the quote sound good and read smoothly, supporting the language and opposing the actions in the story.

In conclusion I would once again like to stress the purpose of this paper; which is to see the underlying message by Ray Bradbury in his story “The Last Night of the World”. As we have discussed Bradbury's aspirations along with the true meaning of this story opposes the simple storyline in the short story where the married couple does nothing interesting or out of ordinary on what they know is their last night on earth. So while reading if one pays only little attention they will see only the basic storyline and be confused with the point of Bradbury’s writing; but when noticing the discrete details such as the language, the punctuation and the repetition chosen by the author we see the true, intended meaning of the story; which is to live one’s life to the fullest, to live for now, for no other time, for you and for no one else. Now if this is the meaning of the passage then why would Bradbury give such a confusing representation throughout the story? Well because throughout the story Bradbury is not portraying what is ideal or what is even acceptable in his mind in the given situation but demonstrating what would be a disappointment in one’s life, trying to discourage individuals from those actions.Hopefully now you will notice how critical it is for one literary device need to support another to develop the meaning within a story. Now I hope that after reading this paper you see the purpose behind the given literary devices: language, punctuation and repetition and how each one gives specific evidence and how each can be interpreted to show support the true meaning of Bradbury’s “ The Last Night of the World”.
