Demons, Commies, and Garbage Incinerators
One line in Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” stands out to me: on the second page, detritus, tracked in by a dying dog, is swept away and destroyed in a garbage incinerator, which, in the book’s narration, is said to “ [sit] like evil Baal in a dark corner.” This is immediately strange: Baal (or Ba’al, it depends), is a historically broad term, referring to many varietal deities, but Bradbury was raised Baptist, so it is most useful for us to examine the Christian idea of Baal: variably idol of the Israelites, philistine Lord of the Flies, or Literally Just Satan. The garbage incinerator, on the other hand, is the garbage incinerator: a little quaint, Atomic©, perhaps, in its representation as an automated household fixture, but comparatively standard. Certainly not Literally The Lord of Hell and Prince of Demons. Strange to link the two. United States Senator Joseph McCarthy didn’t like those com...