I am currently doing a personal study on Ray's short story The Scythe and I need some help with it. I get my head around the basic plot :- Drew becomes the grim reaper and has to harvest the souls of his family. I was just wondering if anyone knows any major points I should develop throughout my essay?

Quick replies would be much appreciated, cheers in advanced!

Welcome, Heggie!
If you click on "Find" above, and then "Advance Search" in All forums for "Scythe", you'll find los of posts, some of which may help...

Hello! Yeah, I looked through previous posts which have helped a bit. I was just wondering if there was any more ambiguity within the story. I have talked about the field extensively, however I feel my essay is beginning to waffle on. I have also scoured the Internet but to no avail. Perhaps i'm just looking for a deeper meaning that isn't there, but anything you could mention would be beneficial. Thanks.

Deeper meaning?

Well, it shows you that you don't have to apply for a grim reaper job thru the classifieds. Here is a family, that thru circumstances that looked very normal (car break-down)...they are thrust into a situation that boggles the mind. If God uses people as instruments of his work, then is this how God might look? In Bradbury's story, The Machineries of Joy, he takes that idea of God's working thru people, and incorporates it as people being...God's machineries...of joy!

Somebody had to visit that farm house, did they not? Someone had to carry on the job of grim-reaper. Or did they? Within that field outside the farm lay ALL the souls of ALL the peoples of this world. Just think on that. Don't think beyond that. If you do, then you are scanning the scene for more people. The story says ALL the peoples are here. Can you get your mind around THAT? If you do, then the story becomes fascinating in terms of how a person, any person, is taken into the realms beyond his imagination and circumstances beyond his control.

This story is filled with deeper meanings. Ray uses the wheat field as a metaphor of the unimaginable and strange, for instance, "And The Sailor, Home from the Sea." There is something in the patterns of waves in the wheatfields that appear to capture something of the unspoken ultimate truth of things for Bradbury.

"The Scythe" presents a creative explanation for the huge number of untimely deaths in WWII. I've never seen another story like it. It truly stands alone as an American gothic original.