I'm a freshman in college and I'm writing a paper for my english class on "There Will Come Soft Rains". It is my favorite short story, and Sara Teasdale's poem is one of my favorite poems. The assignment is to find a work of fiction that was written as a reaction to an event, and to compare and contrast that work to that event and to a current event. I was just wondering if "There Will Come Soft Rains" was actually written as a reaction to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and if anyone has any personal accounts of these events, or knows what motivated Mr. Bradbury to write this story. Any help you can give is greatly appreciated.
~Kaiti~

Don't know the origin for the story you mentioned, but one of Ray's famous stories, early on...
The Pedestrian
...was written because Ray was actually stopped and harassed by the police for no other reason than he was walking late one evening.... Thus, The Pedestrian....

The Fog Horn... was written when Ray and his wife were walking along the ocean, and, I believe, an amusement park had been thereabouts, and a piece of the ride, something like the roller coaster or something, lay beneath the water...like the remains of a prehisotric animal...and Ray thought, Wow!...what happened if that were a Dinosaur, being awaken by the sound of a Fog Horn, come to the oceans shore to perhaps, meet its mate.... Ray ran home and wrote the story....
Dandelion... is the wizard on all these sorts of things...she'll probably help you when she logs on later ......

In vain I tried, long and hard, to find anywhere online the supposed pictures of peoples' shadows burned onto the sides of buildings in the nuclear blasts. All that kept coming up was the same one of plant leaves. One of these days may have to resort to the old-fashioned device of consulting books. For a long, interesting, and detailed account of the rollercoasters Ray saw, complete with pictures, go here: Venice History Articles - Roller Coasters & Carousels - http://naid.sppsr.ucla.edu/venice/articles/cc.htm
There are many to choose from. My guess is the one destroyed in 1946. It was huge, and would have been decrepit at the right time for Ray to see it as inspiration for a story published in 1950.

I am probably too late to help kstarski with his or her paper, but today I happened to be re-reading THE ESSENCE OF CREATIVE WRITING, published with Ray's permission in 1962 by the San Antonio, Texas Public Library. This booklet consists of three letters Ray wrote to an aspiring young writer. With regards to, "There Will Come Soft Rains", he noted: "When I get an idea such as, for instance, THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS, in THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES, based on a poem by Sara Teasdale, I try to find a character to personify that idea. In this case, a house. What does the house want? Above all, like the men who built it, to survive. Once you decide what your character WANTS, you let the character have his head. The character, on his way to getting what he wants, be it love, survival, destruction, will write your story for you...." While this quote does not explicitly state what Ray's inspiration for the story was, it appears that he simply wanted to write a story about trying to survive after a nuclear holocaust. And, being the brilliant writer that he is, he chose a unique way of telling the story, by making the character attempting to survive not a man, woman or child but...a house.

Thanks for posting that, it clears things up. This must have been what I was confusing with "Zen in the Art of Writing," or maybe is included in it.

All this discussion caught my eye in a big way, for it was this story that introduced me to the poetry of Sara Teasdale. What began as curiosity became a near-obsession which has now lasted more than two decades. Along the way, I have assembled what is apparently the largest collection of Sara Teasdale autograph material and personal memorabilia currently in private hands. It is eventually bound for a university or historical society archive....thanks to you, Mr. Bradbury. Many of your stories have touched and deeply moved me, but this tale and a couple of others have truly changed my life. I thank you from the proverbial bottom (or should that be "the Deeps"?) of my heart.

On a related note: has Mr. Bradbury ever publicly discussed or might he be willing to reveal why he chose that poem? Even at the time the story was written, Sara Teasdale was becoming rather obscure (the poem in question refers to World War I). Out of all the war poems that have been written, why that one? The answer would be a lovely tidbit to add to my collection.

Ray has said that his wife, during their courtship, used to read him poetry. She read him that Teasdale poem the same week that he saw a photo of the destruction in Japan caused by the A-bomb blasts that ended World War II; specifically, a photo of silhouettes of people against the charred side of a house. His imagination took over, and one of his finest short stories came in being.

Wow Dandelion,
Thanks for the posting listing the info on history of the Southern California amusement piers. I grew up in Santa Monica. My mother met my father on the old venice pier and I worked at Pacific Ocean Park (POP), that was the attempt by CBS to compete with Disneyland. I have many pictures of the piers in my head. I first visited the Venice pier when I was about 4 or 5 and rode the street car from Santa Monica down to Venice with my Dad. When I read Ray's stories about this period, and even some of short stories, such as "The Jar", based on what Ray saw on a pier side show, I really vibrate with the story. I have been in the mirror maze on the old Ocean Park pier, which was turned into part of POP later, and had the big laughing lady on top of the entrance, and I become "The Dwarf". I recently visited the museum of mechanical games at The Cliff House in SF and there was the Laughing Lady, still laughing. Thanks again for that post, I am now in time travel mode. Regards, patrask

as a sidenote,
I don't know if anyone can commiserate with me, but because of this story, I'm actually really bothered by those sillouette lawn ornaments, for the simple reason that they make me think of shadows burned into a wall from a nuclear blast. My friend's house has a number of them and I always catch myself avoiding looking at them for too long.

neurotically,
Dan

I used to sit on the end of the Santa Monica pier and fish, when I was about 8 to 10 years old, say 1950, The building on the end of the pier had a fog horn that faced out to sea. The fog would come rolling in and the horm would then begin to sound. It would bellow as: Beeee Ohoooo and then repeat. If I were a monster from the past I too would have answered. Instead, I held my hands over my ears to lessen the sound.

The Venice pier was gone by the early '50s. the Ocean Park Pier was going strong until Disneyland came along in '55. On the 4th of July the OPP was jammed with people and it would take an hour to walk from end to the other in wall-to-wall people. POP just never worked. I am glad I got to see all of this, and Ray has made it special again with his stories.

quote:

Originally posted by Nard Kordell:
Don't know the origin for the story you mentioned, but one of Ray's famous stories, early on...
The Pedestrian
...was written because Ray was actually stopped and harassed by the police for no other reason than he was walking late one evening.... Thus, The Pedestrian....

The Fog Horn... was written when Ray and his wife were walking along the ocean, and, I believe, an amusement park had been thereabouts, and a piece of the ride, something like the roller coaster or something, lay beneath the water...like the remains of a prehisotric animal...and Ray thought, Wow!...what happened if that were a Dinosaur, being awaken by the sound of a Fog Horn, come to the oceans shore to perhaps, meet its mate.... Ray ran home and wrote the story....
Dandelion... is the wizard on all these sorts of things...she'll probably help you when she logs on later ......