There Will Come Soft Rains
“The success of any story depends on the way it is told”
Storytellers use short stories to portray people, places and ideas in order to entertain and engage the audience’s interest. The success of any story depends upon the way is it told as to achieve its purpose the author intended. Composers of texts use a variety of narrative techniques to convey the themes, characters, setting and plot of the story to the responder and thus fulfill its purpose. I will be illustrating this through the analysis of the Henry Lawson stories including “The Drover’s Wife” and “The Loaded Dog” and through other related texts “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and “Charles” by Shirley Jackson. These stories present a variety of techniques in order …show more content…
to achieve their purpose and help make the story successful.
Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” is a successful story in illustrating the hardships faced by a woman and her children living in the harsh and desolate Australian bush of the 1800s. Lawson uses a variety of techniques and language features as to achieve his purpose of informing and entertaining the audience. The orientation of the story is brief yet effective in setting the scene and placing the characters. Lawson uses detailed imagery and descriptive language to convey the isolated and hostile environment. The harsh landscape expressed in the repetition of ‘no’ and negative connotations in “Bush all round - bush with no horizon…no ranges in the distance, the bush consists of stunted, rotten native apples trees. No undergrowth” and the isolation in the statement “Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization”. These opening paragraphs of the story are successful in immediately engaging the reader’s attention as they develop a clear picture and understanding of the harsh and isolated environment in which the story is set.
Another successful aspect of the story is the development and expression of the characters, such as the drover’s wife to the reader. Lawson uses the story of the women’s struggle to kill a snake as a framework in which to convey her life through a series of flashbacks. With each flashback the reader develops an idea of the many physical and mental hardships she has faced and thus draws an emotional response from the reader. Lawson uses emotive diction and narration on the women’s life in “heart nearly broke in two”, “She is used to the loneliness of it” and the metaphor “worn- out breast”. These comments help evoke our awe and sympathy for her and develop a relationship with reader of her character. In addition another narrative technique used to make this story successful is the use of dialogue. Lawson uses dialogue in revealing certain aspects of the characters to the reader. The dialogue also serves a further purpose of authenticity as Lawson uses colloquial language shown particularly in the drover’s wife’s son, Tommy for example “D’yer” and “If yer wer bit”. This shows the reader the language used by the people of the world represented and adds to the success of the story.
In addition within the story Lawson uses action and suspense to increase the pace of the plot and so as to engage the reader. At the climax of the story, Lawson uses a dramatic description and builds tension with a variety of techniques to capture the Drover’s wife struggle with the snake. Lawson uses descriptive diction and narration in expressing the increased action of the story “Thud, thud- the snake’s back is broken in several places. Thud thud- its head is crushed… “. Lawson also incorporates many action verbs including “springs, lifts, pulls, rises, shakes” and onomatopoeia “snaps and thud” to bring the story to life and give a realistic description to the reader. His dramatic description and short sharp sentences, combined with action verbs, sounds and detailed diction brings the climax of the story alive and engages the reader’s attention and hence is another reason why this story achieves its purpose and is successful.
‘The Loaded Dog’ is another of Henry Lawson’s successful short stories that intends to entertain the reader by the humorous, lighthearted antics of a dog and three Bushmen involved in a dangerous situation. The situation described in “The Loaded Dog” creates a lot of humor and it is this drama and comedy that makes the story successful in entertaining the reader. The potential dangerous situation of a live stick of dynamite held in Tommy (the dogs) mouth chasing after everyone is lightened and manipulated by Lawson’s use of language and amusing descriptions. The narration of Tommy while chasing after the Bushmen
“Wedged into his broadest and silliest grin” and “Delighted as a dog can be” creates a sense of humor and engages the reader in light of this dangerous situation.
In a similar way to “The Drover’s Wife” Lawson uses action and suspense to engage and entertain the reader. In “The Loaded Dog” Lawson uses the structure of his sentences to control the pace and action of the plot and engage the reader. The long and detailed description of the making of the cartridge is an example of a pause in the action, which is in place to emphasis the power and damage the dynamite will have when it goes off. This is expressed in the dialogue of Jim “blow the bottom of the river”. This pause and detailed description is then followed by the development of the dangerous situation of the dog chasing the men with a live cartridge, where the sentences become shorter which quickens the pace of the story. A series of action verbs are used to speed up the pace of the story including “swishing, shouting, bounded, roaring, dodged and yelling”. This type of suspense is again created and built up towards the end of the story when Lawson stops the pace of the story with an emphatic statement when the cartridge explodes. The blast is left to the imagination of the reader and is conveyed by the black humor “it was very good blasting powder”, which is successful in communicating the blast and engaging the reader.
Another factor in this story that helps to make it successful is the way in which the characters are conveyed or expressed to the reader. The character of Tommy, the dog is expressed to the reader as a fun, silly and lovable pup. The description of Tommy is build with the use of positive connotations including “an overgrown pup, a big foolish, four-footed mate” and the narration “appreciation of his own sillyness”. Henry Lawson uses this positive and lighthearted description of Tommy to manipulate and arouse sympathy for the dog as the reader comes to like Tommy and doesn’t want him to die. This positive description of Tommy can be contrasted to the negative description of the Yellow dog that in the end is blown up by the dynamite. Lawson expresses the character of the Yellow dog with the cummulation “sneaking, fighting, thieving canine” and the personification “nursing his own nastiness”. This negative description of the yellow dog influences and manipulates the reader, as we hate the dog and want him to die and allows Lawson to kill the yellow dog and the reader in turn becomes satisfied with the ending.
The short story ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction that communicates a serious message of the destruction of mankind from a nuclear war.
Bradbury uses a variety of techniques to achieve the purpose of engaging and entertaining the reader. The orientation of the story, much like “The Drover’s Wife” is successful in engaging the reader’s interest from the beginning. The unusual situation revealed to the responder in the opening paragraphs of the story, involving the automated house standing alone, surviving a nuclear blast and the mystery of its inhabitants arouses a sense curiosity and intrigue. Bradbury uses narration in “lived happily while the world trembled” and cumulation in the line “one day the world shook and there was an explosion, following by ten thousand explosions and red fire in the sky and a rain of ashes and radioactivity, and the happy time was over” to arouse a sense of mystery and intrigue in the setting of the story and successfully captivates the reader to question this unusual situation and read …show more content…
on.
Another successful aspect of this story is the strong, emotive descriptions of the death of the family and their dog from the nuclear blast. Bradbury uses emotive diction and imagery to express the horrific death of the family “The five spots of paint-the man, the women, the boy, the girl... The rest was a thin layer of charcoal” and the dog “frothed, ran insanely and died”. These strong, emotive descriptions and images create a sense of sympathy by the reader and attract their interest. Within the story Bradbury uses imagery and descriptive language in the expression of the automated house and its functions to engage the reader. Although the story has no characters, the house is depicted as a character and is given human characteristics. The personification of the cleaning mice “the angry robot mice” and “The house was shuddering” brings the story to life and engages the reader. Similar to “The Loaded Dog”, the climax of the story is also successful is engaging the readers interest and is build up of the chaos and destruction of the house from the fire. The destruction of the fire, which is symbolic of human creation, is effectively communicated to the reader. Bradbury uses detailed imagery through the personification of the fire “devoured every room” and “lay hungrily” and the simile “as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins quiver” creates an effective image for the responder of the powerfulness of the fire. The reaction of the house and the chaos is expressed through the simile “like the interior of a clock shop at midnight”. This fast pace action of the plot is then suddenly slowed down with the emphatic statement “smoke and silence” to build the suspense and attract the readers interest. This effective ending, fulfills Bradbury’s purpose of engaging the audience and is another reason why this story is successful.
The short story “Charles” by Shirley Jackson is another successful story that entertains the reader.
It involves a humorous story about a boy named Laurie starting kindergarten and getting into trouble at school, then deceiving his parents by telling them of a bad boy called Charles getting up to mischief, which is really himself. Jackson uses the language style of first person, from the mother’s point of view to develop the story from a one sided, biast perspective. In the opening paragraph, the mother narrates the image of Laurie as a “sweet-voiced nursery-school tot” and the audience is lead to believe her. As the story continues, oblivious to real nature of Laurie the reader is engaged by the mischief and bad boy behavior that is expressed by Laurie to his parents of this mysterious boy named Charles. Similar to the “Loaded Dog” in that Humor is used to attract and entertain the reader. Jackson uses the dialogue of Laurie to reveal the character of Charles to the reader which creates humor and intrigues the audience. The dialogue of Laurie’s telling his parents of Charles “Today Charles hit the teacher” and “Charles was bad again today” and also the dialogue of the parents “this Charles boy sounds like a bad influence” is used for a humorous effect and attracts the
reader.
Throughout the story, Jackson uses the actions and behavior of Laurie at home to express some clues to the audience and engage their interest. The action of Laurie leaving the table while his father is talking to him, spilling milk and taking a biscuit without permission are all in place to engage the reader to question the situation and Laurie. In a similar way to the “Drover’s Wife” and “The Loaded Dog” the ending of this story is effective. In that the suspense of who is Charles, the slight clues made by the narrator and the build up of Charles misdemeanors finally is revealed. The reader is shocked by the climax of the story as they were almost totally unaware of this surprise ending in that Laurie was in fact Charles. In light of this surprise and the delayed ending the reader reflects the context of the story and in turn draws out a lighthearted, humorous feeling, which fulfills the author’s purpose and builds its success.
In order for a short story to be successful it needs to fulfill its purpose and engage the audience. Composers of short stories need to convey their themes and ideas effectively to the reader using a variety of techniques. In the Henry Lawson story “The Drover’s Wife”, Lawson uses the expression of her character and suspense to inform and engage the audience. Henry Lawson’s “Loaded Dog” uses suspense and humor, much like Shirley Jackson’s “Charles” which relies on humor to attract the audience, and Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” uses a sense of mystery, suspense and descriptive imagery to build its successfulness.
Storytellers use short stories to portray people, places and ideas in order to entertain and engage the audience’s interest. The success of any story depends upon the way is it told as to achieve its purpose the author intended. Composers of texts use a variety of narrative techniques to convey the themes, characters, setting and plot of the story to the responder and thus fulfill its purpose. I will be illustrating this through the analysis of the Henry Lawson stories including “The Drover’s Wife” and “The Loaded Dog” and through other related texts “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury and “Charles” by Shirley Jackson. These stories present a variety of techniques in order …show more content…
to achieve their purpose and help make the story successful.
Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” is a successful story in illustrating the hardships faced by a woman and her children living in the harsh and desolate Australian bush of the 1800s. Lawson uses a variety of techniques and language features as to achieve his purpose of informing and entertaining the audience. The orientation of the story is brief yet effective in setting the scene and placing the characters. Lawson uses detailed imagery and descriptive language to convey the isolated and hostile environment. The harsh landscape expressed in the repetition of ‘no’ and negative connotations in “Bush all round - bush with no horizon…no ranges in the distance, the bush consists of stunted, rotten native apples trees. No undergrowth” and the isolation in the statement “Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization”. These opening paragraphs of the story are successful in immediately engaging the reader’s attention as they develop a clear picture and understanding of the harsh and isolated environment in which the story is set.
Another successful aspect of the story is the development and expression of the characters, such as the drover’s wife to the reader. Lawson uses the story of the women’s struggle to kill a snake as a framework in which to convey her life through a series of flashbacks. With each flashback the reader develops an idea of the many physical and mental hardships she has faced and thus draws an emotional response from the reader. Lawson uses emotive diction and narration on the women’s life in “heart nearly broke in two”, “She is used to the loneliness of it” and the metaphor “worn- out breast”. These comments help evoke our awe and sympathy for her and develop a relationship with reader of her character. In addition another narrative technique used to make this story successful is the use of dialogue. Lawson uses dialogue in revealing certain aspects of the characters to the reader. The dialogue also serves a further purpose of authenticity as Lawson uses colloquial language shown particularly in the drover’s wife’s son, Tommy for example “D’yer” and “If yer wer bit”. This shows the reader the language used by the people of the world represented and adds to the success of the story.
In addition within the story Lawson uses action and suspense to increase the pace of the plot and so as to engage the reader. At the climax of the story, Lawson uses a dramatic description and builds tension with a variety of techniques to capture the Drover’s wife struggle with the snake. Lawson uses descriptive diction and narration in expressing the increased action of the story “Thud, thud- the snake’s back is broken in several places. Thud thud- its head is crushed… “. Lawson also incorporates many action verbs including “springs, lifts, pulls, rises, shakes” and onomatopoeia “snaps and thud” to bring the story to life and give a realistic description to the reader. His dramatic description and short sharp sentences, combined with action verbs, sounds and detailed diction brings the climax of the story alive and engages the reader’s attention and hence is another reason why this story achieves its purpose and is successful.
‘The Loaded Dog’ is another of Henry Lawson’s successful short stories that intends to entertain the reader by the humorous, lighthearted antics of a dog and three Bushmen involved in a dangerous situation. The situation described in “The Loaded Dog” creates a lot of humor and it is this drama and comedy that makes the story successful in entertaining the reader. The potential dangerous situation of a live stick of dynamite held in Tommy (the dogs) mouth chasing after everyone is lightened and manipulated by Lawson’s use of language and amusing descriptions. The narration of Tommy while chasing after the Bushmen
“Wedged into his broadest and silliest grin” and “Delighted as a dog can be” creates a sense of humor and engages the reader in light of this dangerous situation.
In a similar way to “The Drover’s Wife” Lawson uses action and suspense to engage and entertain the reader. In “The Loaded Dog” Lawson uses the structure of his sentences to control the pace and action of the plot and engage the reader. The long and detailed description of the making of the cartridge is an example of a pause in the action, which is in place to emphasis the power and damage the dynamite will have when it goes off. This is expressed in the dialogue of Jim “blow the bottom of the river”. This pause and detailed description is then followed by the development of the dangerous situation of the dog chasing the men with a live cartridge, where the sentences become shorter which quickens the pace of the story. A series of action verbs are used to speed up the pace of the story including “swishing, shouting, bounded, roaring, dodged and yelling”. This type of suspense is again created and built up towards the end of the story when Lawson stops the pace of the story with an emphatic statement when the cartridge explodes. The blast is left to the imagination of the reader and is conveyed by the black humor “it was very good blasting powder”, which is successful in communicating the blast and engaging the reader.
Another factor in this story that helps to make it successful is the way in which the characters are conveyed or expressed to the reader. The character of Tommy, the dog is expressed to the reader as a fun, silly and lovable pup. The description of Tommy is build with the use of positive connotations including “an overgrown pup, a big foolish, four-footed mate” and the narration “appreciation of his own sillyness”. Henry Lawson uses this positive and lighthearted description of Tommy to manipulate and arouse sympathy for the dog as the reader comes to like Tommy and doesn’t want him to die. This positive description of Tommy can be contrasted to the negative description of the Yellow dog that in the end is blown up by the dynamite. Lawson expresses the character of the Yellow dog with the cummulation “sneaking, fighting, thieving canine” and the personification “nursing his own nastiness”. This negative description of the yellow dog influences and manipulates the reader, as we hate the dog and want him to die and allows Lawson to kill the yellow dog and the reader in turn becomes satisfied with the ending.
The short story ‘There Will Come Soft Rains’ by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction that communicates a serious message of the destruction of mankind from a nuclear war.
Bradbury uses a variety of techniques to achieve the purpose of engaging and entertaining the reader. The orientation of the story, much like “The Drover’s Wife” is successful in engaging the reader’s interest from the beginning. The unusual situation revealed to the responder in the opening paragraphs of the story, involving the automated house standing alone, surviving a nuclear blast and the mystery of its inhabitants arouses a sense curiosity and intrigue. Bradbury uses narration in “lived happily while the world trembled” and cumulation in the line “one day the world shook and there was an explosion, following by ten thousand explosions and red fire in the sky and a rain of ashes and radioactivity, and the happy time was over” to arouse a sense of mystery and intrigue in the setting of the story and successfully captivates the reader to question this unusual situation and read …show more content…
on.
Another successful aspect of this story is the strong, emotive descriptions of the death of the family and their dog from the nuclear blast. Bradbury uses emotive diction and imagery to express the horrific death of the family “The five spots of paint-the man, the women, the boy, the girl... The rest was a thin layer of charcoal” and the dog “frothed, ran insanely and died”. These strong, emotive descriptions and images create a sense of sympathy by the reader and attract their interest. Within the story Bradbury uses imagery and descriptive language in the expression of the automated house and its functions to engage the reader. Although the story has no characters, the house is depicted as a character and is given human characteristics. The personification of the cleaning mice “the angry robot mice” and “The house was shuddering” brings the story to life and engages the reader. Similar to “The Loaded Dog”, the climax of the story is also successful is engaging the readers interest and is build up of the chaos and destruction of the house from the fire. The destruction of the fire, which is symbolic of human creation, is effectively communicated to the reader. Bradbury uses detailed imagery through the personification of the fire “devoured every room” and “lay hungrily” and the simile “as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins quiver” creates an effective image for the responder of the powerfulness of the fire. The reaction of the house and the chaos is expressed through the simile “like the interior of a clock shop at midnight”. This fast pace action of the plot is then suddenly slowed down with the emphatic statement “smoke and silence” to build the suspense and attract the readers interest. This effective ending, fulfills Bradbury’s purpose of engaging the audience and is another reason why this story is successful.
The short story “Charles” by Shirley Jackson is another successful story that entertains the reader.
It involves a humorous story about a boy named Laurie starting kindergarten and getting into trouble at school, then deceiving his parents by telling them of a bad boy called Charles getting up to mischief, which is really himself. Jackson uses the language style of first person, from the mother’s point of view to develop the story from a one sided, biast perspective. In the opening paragraph, the mother narrates the image of Laurie as a “sweet-voiced nursery-school tot” and the audience is lead to believe her. As the story continues, oblivious to real nature of Laurie the reader is engaged by the mischief and bad boy behavior that is expressed by Laurie to his parents of this mysterious boy named Charles. Similar to the “Loaded Dog” in that Humor is used to attract and entertain the reader. Jackson uses the dialogue of Laurie to reveal the character of Charles to the reader which creates humor and intrigues the audience. The dialogue of Laurie’s telling his parents of Charles “Today Charles hit the teacher” and “Charles was bad again today” and also the dialogue of the parents “this Charles boy sounds like a bad influence” is used for a humorous effect and attracts the
reader.
Throughout the story, Jackson uses the actions and behavior of Laurie at home to express some clues to the audience and engage their interest. The action of Laurie leaving the table while his father is talking to him, spilling milk and taking a biscuit without permission are all in place to engage the reader to question the situation and Laurie. In a similar way to the “Drover’s Wife” and “The Loaded Dog” the ending of this story is effective. In that the suspense of who is Charles, the slight clues made by the narrator and the build up of Charles misdemeanors finally is revealed. The reader is shocked by the climax of the story as they were almost totally unaware of this surprise ending in that Laurie was in fact Charles. In light of this surprise and the delayed ending the reader reflects the context of the story and in turn draws out a lighthearted, humorous feeling, which fulfills the author’s purpose and builds its success.
In order for a short story to be successful it needs to fulfill its purpose and engage the audience. Composers of short stories need to convey their themes and ideas effectively to the reader using a variety of techniques. In the Henry Lawson story “The Drover’s Wife”, Lawson uses the expression of her character and suspense to inform and engage the audience. Henry Lawson’s “Loaded Dog” uses suspense and humor, much like Shirley Jackson’s “Charles” which relies on humor to attract the audience, and Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” uses a sense of mystery, suspense and descriptive imagery to build its successfulness.