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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. What allusion is present in the weather box's announcement of the rain?
2. The robot mice are said to live in "warrens." This means that they live in what?
3. The use of sentence fragments in the description of the spreading fire is probably intended to create what effect?
4. What happens to the dog when it cannot get into the kitchen?
5. When the narrator tells readers that it seems like the voice-clock is worried that no one will get up, this is an example of what technique?
Short Essay Questions
1. What is the likely purpose of including mechanical creatures such as rats and roaches?
2. Explain what evidence there is that the house deliberately causes the dog's death.
3. What is the intended effect of juxtaposing the images of the silhouettes with the description of the house's continued paranoia about intruders?
4. Explain what is ironic about the rain in the nursery scenery.
5. Explain how the pun in the line "The morning house lay empty" explains why the house is empty and foreshadows the story's later revelation of the family's fate.
6. What is ironic about Bradbury's use of rain in this story?
7. Explain the allusion to Odysseus's dog and how it functions in the story.
8. What is the meaning of the silhouettes on the side of the house?
9. Explain the purpose of the story's allusion to Longfellow's poem "The Children's Hour."
10. How do the cleaning mice allude to Cinderella, and what is the purpose of this allusion?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Explain which details in "There Will Come Soft Rains" are explicitly taken from the history surrounding the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Offer a thesis about what these details are meant to accomplish and argue whether this is a successful strategy.
Essay Topic 2
Bradbury uses details in his story that create a portrait of a comfortable, middle-class family of the mid-twentieth century. Bridge, cigars, egg-salad, martinis, and surprisingly large breakfasts all help create this picture. Of course, these details are less relevant to today's audience. If you were rewriting "There Will Come Soft Rains" for today's audiences and wanted to include details that would immediately tell the reader "This is a middle-class family that likes its creature comforts," what details would you include, and why?
Essay Topic 3
The narrator of "There Will Come Soft Rains" is a very traditional third-person narrator, taking a removed and seemingly unbiased stance on the events of the story. But is that actually the case? What evidence do you see that the narrator actually does have an opinion about these events?
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This section contains 1,239 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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