Rain, Rain, Go Away

Irony appears in many forms throughout the story. This adds to the suspense and keeps the ending feeling like a surprise despite the ample foreshadowing, while also helping develop The Illusion of Perfection and Control and Fear of the Unknown as themes.

Situational irony is clearest in the story’s conclusion. The Wrights have experienced growing fear and anxiety about their neighbors’ origins and intentions, when it was in fact the Sakkaros who needed to fear the Wrights. Had the Wrights not convinced them to visit the park and then wasted time trying to convince them that the storm would be over quickly, the Sakkaros would have been safe at home. This creates a kind of reversal of characterization, which is also ambiguous: The Wrights are clearly presented as the protagonists in the story, but they in effect become the antagonists. This raises a question as to which family had more cause to fear the other.

Situational irony is present in a different way at the end of the story, when the Sakkaros must race desperately “toward their long front walk” and across their “spacious” yard (133), which Mrs. Wright earlier in the story described as “tremendous.” The Sakkaros are halfway to their door when the rain comes down, suggesting that if only they’d had a smaller yard, they might have survived. This thematically conveys The Illusion of Perfection and Control and the social context of suburban America, where huge yards and long walks were markers of status that might protect a family.

Given Asimov’s heavy hand in foreshadowing the Sakkaros’ fate, the story’s ending might also be considered a form of dramatic irony: The story implies that something bad will happen when the family gets stuck in the rain, but the Wrights can’t even conceive of such an outcome, though Mrs. Wright describes it herself by quoting a cliché about people who dislike rain being “made of sugar and afraid they would melt” (134).

An allusion is a reference to a person, place, thing, event, or literary work. “Rain, Rain, Go Away” alludes to a nursery rhyme, a method of torture, and two names contemporary to the cultural setting of the novel, one of which (Coke, or Coca Cola) readers are still likely to know and the other of which (Red Schoendienst) they aren’t.

The allusion in the story’s title refers to the nursery rhyme of the same name, which goes, “Rain, rain, go away, / come again another day.” There are different variations to the original rhymed couplet, and children over the years have added verses to the ending, but the original rhyme sufficiently foreshadows the Sakkaros’ fears and sets the story’s tone. The second line of the couplet, unspoken in the title but likely to ring in readers’ ears, suggests that this end for the Sakkaros was inevitable; they couldn’t avoid the rain forever, as it would always “come again another day.”

Mr. Wright associates the Sakkaro boy’s playing with “a version of the Chinese water torture. Bang on the wall, biff on the ground, smack in the hand. Bang, biff, smack, bang, biff—” (127). The reference to a method of torture in which icy water is repeatedly and slowly dripped onto a person’s head to create severe anxiety and disorientation was commonly used in the 20th century to describe any repeated and slightly irritating noise or movement. However, the reference also connects thematically to Fear of the Unknown and contributes to a mild sense of foreboding. Given the fear of spies in the 1950s and the fact that the Sakkaros aren’t what they seem, one may wonder whether the boy was in fact using “play” to torment the neighbors.

Asimov has sometimes been criticized for references to pop culture figures and products in his writing. This story, for example, mentions the baseball player Red Schoendienst as having been at bat during a game. While most today wouldn’t recognize the name of this 1950s ball player, Asimov’s reference to the Coke (or Coca Cola) in George Wright’s hand proves to have staying power and some contextual value. The description of the soda, “freshly opened and frosted with moisture” (127) sounds like something straight out of an advertisement, reinforcing the image of the Wrights as an average American family who buy and consume the products they see advertised while watching baseball, “America’s pastime.”