Analysis Of Ray Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains

The year is 2026; the world has blown itself to hell. The advantages of our modern society mattered little; when man, in his brash irrational thinking, went and pulled the trigger on the final act as a species. In Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” the reader envisions the end of the world witnessed through the eyes of the last member of the family; furthermore, in that moment it is hard to remember that the witness was indeed not human. Man has long instilled humanistic characteristics onto inanimate objects: the car that takes on a (usually) female gender’s name, a hunting rifle that has shot true for the hunter. It is man’s nature to ascribe these tendencies to objects; indeed, the possibilities are limitless with the advent …show more content…
Loneliness, devotion, and nurturing are the first traits that come to mind as the story unfolds. Here is a house that has a job to do; it is devoted to carry out the responsibilities everyday as it has been tasked to complete them. Every morning it chimes out an alarm, trying to wake up a household that no longer resides within, and every morning it sadly worries “that nobody would” (322) awaken. The backdrop to this story is set in a post apocalyptic America; a land where its inhabitants have suffered from world ending bombs. The house holds dear to its last image of the family; as if in some horrific last photograph taken upon scarred white washed walls. A family forever frozen in time doing day to day living: a man mowing the yard, a woman picking flowers, and children tossing a ball are that are left of memories of a world before. Every meal, it dutifully prepares in anticipation of the laughing family returning to its halls. Unfortunately for the dog who has no hands, the house which is afforded every luxury known, to its technologically superior master, cannot give that vital substance it now desperately needs. Again the home has to witness the despair of yet another family member never returning to the realm of happiness. As the story continues and the dynamic of this faithful home continues, showing more characteristics prone to human life than that of a machine, the “children’s hour” (325) begins. With a blatant unknowing irony, it begins to randomly read a poem, by Sara Teasdale “There Will Come Soft Rains" of which the story gets its title, in which the world has gone and destroyed itself. “Not one would mind, either bird nor tree if mankind perished utterly” realizing not that the world around it has joined in the