There Will Come Soft Rains - Narrative Techniques

"There Will Come Soft Rains"
by Ray Bradbury

-Review of plot, character, and theme development.

-Analyze narrative techniques - parallelism, personification

Multiple Select

"There Will Come Soft Rains" was influenced by which 2 historical events?

• Chernobyl

• World War I

• Cold War

• Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Multiple Choice

Who is the main character within the story?

• A house

• A family of four

• A dog

• A storm

Multiple Choice

How does the reader learn where and when "There Will Come Soft Rains" takes place?

• The date and location are burned into the side of the house.

• An electronic device states the time, date, and location at the beginning of the story.

• There is a newspaper on the kitchen table that shows the date and location of the story.

Open Ended

What does the reader learn about the family who lived in the house? What details reveal their fate?

Multiple Choice

What theme does the poem read to the children at night and the overall story share?

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war,

not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn

Would scarcely know that we were gone."

• Both share the them that humans are overly dependent on technology.

• Both share the theme that nature is beautiful and springtime is filled with rain.

• Both share the theme that life would carry on if humans were to destroy themselves.

• Both share the theme that nature doesn't like to be disturbed.

Multiple Choice

What finally happens to the house?

• It scares away all the animals.

• It realizes the family is dead and hosts a funeral.

• It burns down despite desperately trying to save itself.

• It's left standing in spite of the fire.

Narrative Technique 1

Parallelism

The use of similar grammatical forms or patterns to express similar ideas.

Effective use of parallelism adds rhythm and balance to writing and strengthens connections among ideas.

Draw

Highlight the use of parallelism.

Open Ended

Rewrite and add details to this paragraph using at least one example of parallelism.

Narrative Technique 2

Personification

The setting of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is much more than a backdrop. Since there are no living characters, the setting of the automated house also functions as a character through an extended form of personification, a figure of speech in which a non-human subject is given human characteristics.

Open Ended

How is the house characterized in this example of personification? What point is Bradbury trying to make?

Open Ended

Find and record an example of personification. Add an explanation - How is the house characterized based on this example?