Beau Largent

9 February 2016

Phillips

ENGL 101-022

The Working House

We as a society are constantly trying to better ourselves and invent contraption's to make life easier. Most of the time, our desire to make life more livable benefits us, but sometimes we need to look back and say, "Is this too much?" There is a fine line we are working on, between making the world better or harming the very world we live on with our developments. This debate is going on at this very moment with the amount of pollution humans are creating and the potential of severe climate change. This leads us to see that nature and technology tend not to mix together cleanly. In Ray Bradbury's "August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains", Bradbury shows a future that he believes will happen due to humans toying with nature. Bradbury paints a picture of a fully self-efficient, working house in a desolate town, which used to be Allendale, CA. He explains how the town had been wiped out from Nuclear explosion leaving this house to continue its daily chores of waking the family, making meals, cleaning, and etc. with no one there for it to please. Then nature takes over by a tree falling into the side of the house and causing a fire. Bradbury uses constant repetition, sharp imagery, and personification to demonstrate that nature will always succeed and how humans are ruining our creations through our own pitfalls. 

Through the use of constant repetition and order throughout the house, Bradbury shows how close to working perfection the house is at. The house works on the same schedule everyday, starting with waking the whole house up by projecting a voice throughout the house," Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o'clock!" (Bradbury 1) This voice continues to project through the house whenever there is a new announcement or update. Bradbury's use of repetition truly gives the house a robotic feel, as it just continues the announcements throughout its daily schedule. Allowing the reader to really feel the desolation in the house. The repeating schedule also gives the reader a sense of comfort at first, as the house has everything under control. It makes you believe the house will continue on and on until eternity. In reality the house can only survive on its own until it runs out of water or a disaster happens. The latter then causes the house into a battle with fire, only to lose hopelessly. The use of repetition also sets up the demise of the house, with every update being announced until, " At ten o'clock the house began to die." (Bradbury 3) Just as the house stops its repetition, nature comes into play bringing a tree through the kitchen leading to a fire that cannot be stopped even by the 'self-efficient' house. In conclusion, the repetition sets up the theme that nature and technology do not mix without the help of humans overseeing this mixture in a responsible manner. 

Imagery plays a large factor, creating the working house for the reader. It allows us to see the way the inhabitants of the house perished, "their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air" (Bradbury 1). Bradbury's imagery expresses the picture painted on the west side of the house by the nuclear explosion. It depicts the entire families instant death, highlighted by the surrounding charred wood. This picture of instant death helps us recall back to the theme of crossing the line, how nuclear power, or technology can ruin an entire population if not used carefully. We see later the imagery Bradbury uses to express the chaos during the fire, "The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water ... the solvent spread on the linoleum ... the voices took it up in chorus" (Bradbury 3) This image shown by Bradbury helps show how quickly nature had taken over the house, and how the house could do nothing about it. The chaotic state displayed during the fire explains the effects of how humans fault, in the nuclear explosion, leads to nature crumbling our creations. Overall, while the imagery used by Bradbury allows us to picture the house, it also illustrates the house's quick expiration.

The personification Bradbury uses makes the reader feel more connected to the house and nature, giving them a more life like state. It's sink, "digested"(1) leftover food and the house had, "drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia." (Bradbury 1-2) The personification of the house allows the reader to understand the house more than if Bradbury had just explained the house closed its windows for protection. But instead he gives the house this sense of paranoia. He wants us to feel as this was our invention and we had stopped taking care of it. He gives the cleaning mice emotions, as they angrily clean up the mud the dog has tracked through the house. Bradbury then gives the reader the same personification in the fire, "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" (Bradbury 4). This leaves the reader seeing the house being tortured by nature. Nature keeps taking over the house making it shudder and cringe, just how a human would in that situation. Bradbury also gives nature human senses as the, "fire was clever" (Bradbury 4). He keeps the reader drawn between the two forces and having to pick a side. In conclusion, the use of personification gives us a better understanding of the two forces battling each other. 

This story helps explain how if we keep developing as a society at such a rapid past, we can ruin everything we strive for. Author Ray Bradbury uses the house as our creation, the nuclear explosion as an example of the negatives of technology, and nature as a way to tell us we are going to fast. We see this through his use of repetition, striking imagery, and personification to show the dominance of nature when mankind is absent to watch over our creations. Bradbury almost foresees the future, as today we battle with the pace we are creating and the damage it is doing to our earth. If we keep creating at such paces, one day we may be gone, just as the people of Allendale were. Leaving our innovations to suffer to have no meaning without the people who created them. This leads us to see that while creating is great, it is useless without someone to benefit. Overall, we need to keep ourselves alive to use the inventions that we have spent our life work perfecting. 
