Imagine this: you are fully aware that at any given second, on any given day, the world as you know it could come to an end. What would you do with your slim amount of time left? Would you spend all your hard-earned money and start crossing items off your bucket list? Would you do what makes you unexplainably happy? Or would you simply spend it with loved ones in the place you cherish most? Ray Bradbury’s short story, “The Last Night of the World” highlights American citizens’ fear of the world ending at any given moment due to nuclear warfare during the Cold War. Although explicitly stated otherwise in the text, Bradbury cleverly addresses the fears of a nuclear attack by disguising them as a common dream among all of humanity in the short
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“The Last Night of the World” is explicitly about the Cold War and how Americans lived in such constant fear that the fear itself seemed ordinary; the characters in Bradbury’s short story embodied this perspective as they acted in acceptance of the death that they believed was about to come that night.
A common theme throughout “The Last Night of the World” is that all adults had received the same strange dream about the world ending. This compares to how all adults who were capable of understanding the magnitude of the Cold War realized that their lives could end at any moment via an atomic bomb. The characters in Bradbury’s short story seem to reflect on this point many times throughout the piece. When the two main characters spoke about what they think other people would be doing on this last night, the husband said, “I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really known just what they were going to be doing during the …show more content…
At one point, the wife interrogates, “Do we deserve this?” Her husband replied, “It’s not a matter of deserving, it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?” (Bradbury 2). While the wife is likely reflecting on possible wrongs that she, her family, and society have committed to receive this punishment of death by nuclear warfare, her husband brushes off that fact as he is thinking about life in a much broader sense. Eaton references, “In reality, the experience of being alive, then as now, has always been characterized by uncertainty and improvisation, a circumstance that becomes evident when we shift our thinking of the past into thinking of it as that which was once present” (68). The ambiguity of being alive is surfaced by the husband’s casual brushing off his wife’s question. It is clear that the husband has already accepted the foreseen event of the world ending that night. Some readers may think that the husband’s characterization is peculiar. However, Hoskinson states, “Through his examination of government oppression of the individual, the hazards of an atomic age, re-civilization of society, and the divided nature of the “Cold War Man,” Ray Bradbury uses The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to expose the ‘meanness’ of the cold war years” (346). Although Hoskinson’s analysis is based primarily on other works by
“The Last Night of the World” is explicitly about the Cold War and how Americans lived in such constant fear that the fear itself seemed ordinary; the characters in Bradbury’s short story embodied this perspective as they acted in acceptance of the death that they believed was about to come that night.
A common theme throughout “The Last Night of the World” is that all adults had received the same strange dream about the world ending. This compares to how all adults who were capable of understanding the magnitude of the Cold War realized that their lives could end at any moment via an atomic bomb. The characters in Bradbury’s short story seem to reflect on this point many times throughout the piece. When the two main characters spoke about what they think other people would be doing on this last night, the husband said, “I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really known just what they were going to be doing during the …show more content…
At one point, the wife interrogates, “Do we deserve this?” Her husband replied, “It’s not a matter of deserving, it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?” (Bradbury 2). While the wife is likely reflecting on possible wrongs that she, her family, and society have committed to receive this punishment of death by nuclear warfare, her husband brushes off that fact as he is thinking about life in a much broader sense. Eaton references, “In reality, the experience of being alive, then as now, has always been characterized by uncertainty and improvisation, a circumstance that becomes evident when we shift our thinking of the past into thinking of it as that which was once present” (68). The ambiguity of being alive is surfaced by the husband’s casual brushing off his wife’s question. It is clear that the husband has already accepted the foreseen event of the world ending that night. Some readers may think that the husband’s characterization is peculiar. However, Hoskinson states, “Through his examination of government oppression of the individual, the hazards of an atomic age, re-civilization of society, and the divided nature of the “Cold War Man,” Ray Bradbury uses The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451 to expose the ‘meanness’ of the cold war years” (346). Although Hoskinson’s analysis is based primarily on other works by