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Metaphors
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood in “There Will Come Soft Rains” ranges from childishly endearing to uncanny as details about the McClellans’ house surface. The story initially provides an untroubled impression of an ordinary weekday morning:
In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o’ clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o’ clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine!
The opening plays on childish tropes of singing clocks to fashion itself under the guise of a fairytale. The clock declares the time with a misleadingly cheerful chirpiness while bacon sizzles on the pan and bill notifications filter through the kitchen ceiling. In its endearing selection of details, the story’s introduction establishes an expectation of comforting domesticity.
The story extends this ambiguity until it cannot. As the narrator turns an eye to the city’s “radioactive glow” and the “images burned on wood in one titanic instant,” these earlier illusions immediately crumple:
Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photography, 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 ball which never came down.
The McClellans are dead. The story’s mention of nuclear destruction now adds a sinister inflection to previously innocuous details. The morning house’s earlier “emptiness” takes a morbid turn. The clock crying out as if “nobody” would rise suddenly becomes more than a mere figure of speech.
Our growing awareness now throws the story and its details in a ghastly light. As such, the story becomes chilling. The house’s “old-maidenly” order makes a pivot from eccentrically lovable to something more vaguely oppressive, especially after its treatment of the McClellans’ dead dog. In its inflexible adherence to daily schedules and the passing time, the house reveals a disquieting appetite for control. As bridge tables sprout from patio walls and an automated voice recites Teasdale’s poem, the micromanaging household appliances remake themselves into the things of jarring nightmare more than any innocent fantasy.
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