Summary Of Ray Bradbury's The Scythe

Where there is life, there will always be death. A start must always have an end even if a new beginning must emerge. Ray Bradbury, the author of “The Scythe”, wrote the story on the basis of death and how it comes about. The ideas of death throughout this short story are frightening but help us as a society rationalize death to our own beliefs. The author explains his theme of the story through the many symbols in his text.

A major symbolic piece of this story was the scythe itself. It carries many meanings as to how its used in the story. The scythe can be seen as the carrier of death itself. The scythe slices through life and hungers to take more lives from anyone. Death itself embodies the scythe and allows the taking of lives but it also has a parallel meaning to itself

Drew, the main character of the story, Can be seen in the beginning of the story already with old rough farmer’s hands which can exhibit the calling of himself already to become the next reaper so to speak. From the first time Drew cuts the wheat stalks the word “roused” is used to describe him which essentially means to awaken which gives more details to the horrors that lie in the scythe itself and how it would “awaken” to another owner. It also states that Drew felt scything was somewhat important seeing as he didn 't fully understand the consequences of his actions of taking up the scythe as job of the reaper was slowly drawing his emotions away. Death needs to occur so as Drew takes time away, he begins to hear the field call his name and he begins to contract headaches from being away from his duty. After this point the adjectives mainly used are very bland Ray Bradbury uses all these different words to allude to the fact that death itself is unbiased against anyone or anything. Death will occur whenever and wherever it wants as it sees