Analysis Through the Setting of "August 2026 Essay Example

In “August 2026”, the main focus is the setting, a mechanical house running a usual day. It starts off with us in a mechanical house located in a suburban neighborhood that used to be streamed with white houses and picket fences just like the one we are in. the light patter of raindrops is heard o the window sill. The house is waking up, and as programmed is making breakfast. No one eats when the food is ready because no one is there, but the house with its dedication to serving continues on. “The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly” (Bradbury 174). The house, even though alone, continues on cleaning and running the daily chores as programmed by its owners long ago. The outside of the house is described as a white house with only one black wall. The black wall is where the explosion must have hit, because we are given the description of five human silhouettes as described in the quote, “in paint a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down” (Bradbury 173). At this point we see how the house has been in denial that it is the only one left standing. “Bradbury has anthropomorphized the house with the personality of someone lonely and lost who has found herself suddenly and dramatically isolated from the world” (Austin 1). However it is in denial by continuing with the chores even though the setting describes the house standing alone in a pile of rubble. The house had been alone for a while and is starting to grow suspicious, and starts to grow insecure. In the quote, “Until this day, how well the house has kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, ‘Who goes