Reading Check — There Will Come Soft Rains
Who survived the initial disaster?
The dog
The townspeople gather in the town square for this annual event.
The Lottery
Ethos is an appeal based primarily on this.
credibility, authority, or trustworthiness
What is an urgent situation or problem that calls for a response?
Exigence
Both stories initially present a seemingly ordinary setting before revealing this.
Something horrifying or destructive
The house continues preparing meals, cleaning, and announcing the time even though these people are no longer there.
McClellans
This character is the first person to protest when her family is selected.
Tessie Hutchinson
When Tessie Hutchinson screams that the lottery is unfair, Jackson uses this rhetorical appeal by creating an emotional reaction in the reader.
Pathos
What is timing/the right moment or circumstances?
Kairos
Bradbury's story primarily warns readers about the consequences of this human development.
Technology
This natural event ultimately destroys the house.
A fire
This family initially draws the marked slip, causing the lottery to move to the individual family members.
Hutchinson family
A reader might identify this appeal in The Lottery when the villagers use the reasoning that the lottery must continue because their ancestors practiced it.
Logos
What are shared cultural beliefs?
Doxa
Jackson's story primarily critiques this human tendency.
Blindly following tradition/conformity
Bradbury includes this famous poem within the story, creating an ironic connection between nature and humanity's destruction.
“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale
The townspeople use these objects during the final ritual.
Stones/rocks
In The Lottery, the authority of tradition gives the ritual this rhetorical quality: people accept the practice because it has been endorsed and maintained by the community for generations.
The belief that “this is simply how things have always been done” is an example of this rhetorical concept in The Lottery.
Doxa
In Bradbury's story, technology continues operating after humanity is gone.
In Jackson's story, people continue participating in the lottery even though its original purpose has been forgotten.
What do these details have in common?
The continuation of systems or traditions without meaningful human questioning.
The silhouettes of the former family on the side of the house suggest that this catastrophic event happened before the story begins.
nuclear explosion/war
The villagers continue the lottery primarily because this has become an accepted tradition, even though many no longer remember why it began.
Tradition
Bradbury creates an emotional response by showing an empty house continuing its ordinary routines while the reader gradually realizes what happened to its inhabitants.
Pathos
Bradbury's story can be read as responding to the fear of this historical problem, making the threat of technological warfare especially relevant to the story's creation.
Nuclear war/the threat of nuclear destruction
Both There Will Come Soft Rains and The Lottery portray people participating in systems that have consequences they do not fully question. Using at least two rhetorical concepts, identify one argument you could make about what each author is suggesting about human behavior.
An argument about humanity's tendency to accept destructive systems through conformity, tradition, or unquestioned dependence on technology.