Compare And Contrast By The Waters Of Babylon And There Will Come Soft Rains

Words: 470
Pages: 2
Open Document
The dreadful cost of war is conveyed in both short stories, “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. In his short story, Benet says that if we, as a race, keep advancing technology without having the wisdom to utilize it, our modern society will cease to exist. As shown, any survivors will have to start anew. As bleak as Benet’s vision on the future of mankind is, Bradbury offers a future free from humanity entirely. His message is, even though humans are gone from the world, nature and everything within it will go about their lives as people have never existed.
“By the Waters of Babylon” references Psalms 137 through the title and the scripture helps deliver Benet’s message. Psalms 137 is foretelling the destruction of Babylon, which was the world superpower of its time. America, in its time, was the world’s superpower. By having the story take place in America, Benet uses the scripture to have Babylon represent America. Babylon was an empire that lived by the sword and died by the sword. America is a country that also lives by the sword and in the story it dies …show more content…
The poem says,“And not one will know of the war, not one will care at last when it is done”(4th stanza). This helps emphasize the message because the quote is saying that not one thing in nature will notice when mankind ceases to exist. The one exception to this message is the dog and how it frantically searches for its owners, unaware of the fact that their only remains are the shadows imprinted upon the outer walls of the house,“The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places...The five spots of paint- the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer”(p.615). Within the quote each activity that the people were doing was immortalized on the wall of the house due to how sudden the blast
Show More

Related Documents: Compare And Contrast By The Waters Of Babylon And There Will Come Soft Rains

Compare And Contrast By The Waters Of Babylon And There Will Come Soft Rains

The short stories “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury have many distinct similarities. Both authors seemed to fear the abilities of technology and what the human race would do with the technology they created. Humans destroy things and the two stories take place in a post apocalyptic world where people caused their own downfall. In the short story “By the Waters of Babylon” the main message or moral of the story is a warning about…

Words 613 - Pages 3