Ray Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains" includes many haunting images about the absence of human life after a nuclear strike kills all people in this community, at least.
Most of the imagery in the story is visual and creates a sense of emptiness in this world. In the story's second paragraph, Bradbury creates the image of a breakfast waiting to be eaten: "...eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk." A few paragraphs later, a car sits "waiting" and playing cards sit "silent" and "untouched."
The most haunting image of this story is Bradbury's description of the family that used to live in this house. All the family members, except for the family dog, died in the nuclear blast. Bradbury describes the image left on the "charred west side" of the house:
"The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man moving 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 blall which never came down."
Besides the haunting visual imagery, Bradbury creates several instances of audible imagery. The "voice-clock" singing the time and and a second computerized voice saying the date: "Tick-tock, seven o'clock..." and "Today is August 4, 2057." The sound of the house "clicked" and "hummed."
Meanwhile, the imagery related to the fire is animal-like and it was "licking" and eating" and "fed upon Picassos and Matisses."
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