The effect of the reportorial voice of the third-person narrator in Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains" is one of a mere presentation of fact without any emotional elements. Thus, it is impersonal and uncaring, imitative of the automatized house itself that no longer has any human occupants, but continues to function until it burns.
Since the technologically automated house cannot be aware of any differences, it continues as it has been programmed, and the narrator chronicles its operations objectively without any attention to the disaster that has caused the loss of the human occupants. This dispassionate voice draws the reader to the meaninglessness of the operations within the house now that it is unoccupied as it merely records the operations of its own programming.
With the same reportorial voice, the narrator describes the fire which consumes the house. And, senselessly the house still announces the time:
...when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity...And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the...wire withered and the circuits cracked.
Again, the same tone of voice reports this devastation as the voice that announces the date to the charred rubble and dead people: "Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is...." This voice indicates the insignificance of everything to an oblivious universe.
No comments:
Post a Comment