Babylon Allusions

A plot of a story is the sequence of events that affect what will happen next in the story. The plots of the two short stories, "There Will Come Soft Rains" and "By the Waters of Babylon", are very similar. This is because they both take place in a post apocalyptic wasteland in which all of the old humans have died off and only the technology is left. The only humans that are left in "By the Waters of Babylon" are completely unaware of anything technological and have gone back to living in the wilderness alone and unknowing of the world around them. In "There Will Come Soft Rains" only a single house survived, and this "house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, …show more content…
In "By the Waters of Babylon," allusions are used to give more information about the setting, more specifically where the story is taking place, and what the Place of the Gods used to be. In "There Will Come Soft Rains," allusions are used to give background information on what had happened to the humans and other houses. Just before the house burns, these words of a poem are read "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" (Bradbury 3). This poem says that mankind has been wiped out, and since no one is left, no one knows and no one cares that such a tragedy has occurred. The literary device of allusion is used in two very different ways, as it explains the setting in one story, and gives background information in the …show more content…
Personification is used a lot during the short story "There Will Come Soft Rains," by Ray Bradbury, but barely at all in "By the Waters of Babylon," by Stephen Vincent Benét. Despite the difference in amount of personification, the device is used in the same way by both of the authors. It is used to give an eerie feeling to the reader as they read about things that seem to be magical, and in "There Will Come Soft Rains," appear to be a very advanced type of technology that can do a lot more than it probably should be able to. For example, when the man is traveling to the Place of the Gods, he finds that “The current of the great river is very strong—it gripped my raft with its hands” (Benét 4). The word “gripped” has a negative connotation as it implies that it was very hard to break its hold and that the hold was a violent one. The author could have said “grabbed” or any other word to the same extent, but by using “gripped,” the creepy mood is further solidified. The current is given these “hands” to give the sentence a strange and wary feeling to it. Due to the specific word choice, it appears as if the river is physically holding onto her raft, and therefore it seems impossible, it seems like magic. The author could have used other words to describe how the raft was moving, but by saying that it grabbed his raft in its “hands” the unnatural feel is even more pronounced. Similarly,

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